


Rotten Verona, Fair Denmark

by honeycasp



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Multi, and not modern so enjoy butchered shakespearean, everyone is gay and i do mean everyone, ham/horatio and romeo/juli are all swapped, i am NOT typing in all those characters its full cast for both and more, i swear trans folks r treated well tho as i am one, its HALF verona HALF denmark ALL unhinged, many trans characters and there is transphobia and mostly non-purposeful misgenderings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-09 16:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19890838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeycasp/pseuds/honeycasp
Summary: Hamlet Montague is going to die in the morning (by planned filicide on the basis of Renaissance-era transgenderism), Horatio Capulet would sooner die than be a wife (he's easing on the word husband), and suddenly everyone and their cousin is lovesick, and stupid, and full of some type of mad rage.Romeo's the closeted Princess who's pretty sure her uncle, now King of Denmark, has just killed her father and married her mother, but before she takes the crown from him she needs a suitable wife to make queen. Juliet, a friend of hers who's crossdressed her way through university, has been lovesick for a while, and really wants Romeo to pay more attention to the task at hand.Or, in short: political schemes and homosexual antics.





	1. Verona, Act One

**Author's Note:**

> this was brought on by a [Textpost I Made](https://lifeisdear.tumblr.com/post/184775515934/i-want-a-roleswapped-hamlethoratio-and) and spiraled from there.
> 
> the length of this is dedicated to coffee, nanowrimo, blood magic, and the entirety of panic! at the disco's album pretty. odd. dear coffee, nanowrimo, blood magic, and the entirety of panic! at the disco's album pretty. odd.: i' faith, i know not whether to thank or curse thee.
> 
> folks, my deepest apologies if this gets confusing, and if i make some mistakes, theres a lot going on,  
> (chapters will alternate from verona to denmark! its a MESS!)

_Two households, both alike in dignity,_

_Disease Verona, where we lay our scene,_

_From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,_

_Where rotted wood is cut and left to bleed._

_From forth the fatal loins of these two foes_

_A pair of star-cross’d lovers make their life;_

_Whose self-made joy does circumvent their woes,_

_And circle back to smother parents’ strife._

_So mark their love, with foot on fresh-packed earth,_

_Where death marks those whose wisdom draws to close._

_While perhaps love in places farther north_

_Does slice and stir our heart’s contemptive throes,_

_Sit down, sit down, and while you sit, I’ll spin_

_A tale we for too long have ought to win._

\---

In an innocent marketplace, two simple servants of the Capulet house walk. Neatly in their sheaths sit two rapiers.

The Capulets, as you probably well know, are one of the two principal families spoken of here, the other being the Montagues. When they see each other, each member of each family, more often than not, loses all brain cells and has to be restrained else they’ll attack with no restraint. God knows why, but it’s some quarrel long gone. It’s all fun and games keeping it up, though.

The older one, and here older really means older by the worse half of a month, speaks up with a voice of authority. “Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.”

The younger, Gregory, snorts. “No, for then we should be colliers.”

The older, whose name is Sampson, gets a gleam in his eye. Ah, puns. A strength of the Capulets. “I mean, an we be in choler, we’ll draw.”

“Ay, while we live, draw your neck out of collar.”

Somewhere, there’s a further conversation regarding subjects of no further real comedy. But here, Gregory hushes him and stops walking.

“Draw thy tool.” He winces; now’s not the time for innuendos. “Here comes of the house of Montagues.”

And, yes, two servants to the Montagues approach. Their excitement at this drains any remaining common sense they clung to.

Sampson nods. “My naked weapon is out.” He snickers at this, apathetic to the families nearby who, catching on to the rising action, start running. “Quarrel, I will back thee.”

“How? Turn thy back and run?”

“Fear me not!”

“No, marry. I fear thee.” Gregory rolls his eyes. “Last time—”

“Shh!” He waves his hand as the they approach, and talks in little more than a whisper. “Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.”

Sampson nods. “I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.”

“A _frown?_ ”

“Ay, a bitter gesture.” He samples a stink-eye. “A frown.”

He shakes his head. “I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it.”

Sampson does this. The Montague servants they are passing (named Abraham and Balthasar, if you must know, but don’t worry; they’re largely irrelevant) take notice, and Abraham approaches them with mock politeness. Balthasar just looks mildly inconvenienced.

“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” Abraham says quietly, fire in his eyes. There’s already an unspoken agreement, and a sort of friendship of excited hatred formed between the three.

“I do bite my thumb, sir.” Sampson answers.

“Ay. I’ll ask once more. Pray, tell me, do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”

Sampson leans back to converse with Gregory. “Is the law of our side if I

say ‘Ay’?”

Gregory sighs. “ _No.”_

“I see.” He turns back to the two. “No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.”

Gregory pipes up. “Do you quarrel, sir?” To which the answer is obvious.

“Quarrel, sir? No, sir.” He says, like a liar.

Sampson vibrates with anger. “But if you do, sir, I am for you. I serve as good a man as you.”

Abraham smiles; the words have been said, and he has the go-ahead. “No better.”

“Well, sir.”

One Montague, Benvolio, enters the near-desolate marketplace from the opposite side, attracted by the scattering people. Neither of the Capulet servants notice this. What Gregory does notice is a figure slinking in the alley, who catches his eye and waves. Gregory pulls Sampson aside this time.

“Say “better”; here comes one of my master’s kinsmen.” He tells him.

Sampson nods, and corrects himself. “Yes, better, sir!”

“You lie!” Abraham shouts.

Benvolio, catching on, sprints across the empty square.

“Draw, if you be men.” Sampson grins. “Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.”

As soon as they draw their weapons the figure of Benvolio, largely non threatening save for his confidence, stands between them with one palm motioning each side to halt.

“Part, fools!” He cries, and, seeing their reluctance, draws his own sword. “You know not what you do.”

Herein lies the problem: Benvolio likely would succeed in mollifying the four, were it not for the stalking figure of Tybalt, who, jumping out of the alleyway, draws his weapon and points it at him.

“What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee, Benvolio,” he challenges, “look upon thy death.”

This is not the day, Benvolio thinks. He’s too tired to deal with this shit. “I do but keep the peace. Put up thy sword, or manage it to part these men with me.”

“What, drawn and talk of peace? I hate the word as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Have at thee, coward!”

All Benvolio wanted was to visit Mercutio, who, lately, he’s been suspicious of harboring the same feelings as his own. He sighs, and takes the challenge; it’s an even number, at least. He can do this, maybe.

He doesn’t have much of a choice, in any case; Tybalt swings at him, and he parries it on impulse. It’s on; for what feels like forever, but what can’t be longer than five short minutes, the four fight uninterrupted but for their own mocking exchanges. After this time, people of both sides, having heard word, join in eagerly.

A few citizens, told of the brawl, enter with assorted weapons. There’s a cry: “Clubs, bills, and partisans! Strike! Beat them down! Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!”

Yes, an important fact: while the Capulets and Montagues hate each other, nothing can compare to the hatred the citizens of Verona harbor for their glorified bickering. Their attack proves this frustration.

Not far away, Lord Capulet peeks out from his carriage, in which Lady Capulet also sits.

“What noise is this?” Lord Capulet asks. “Give me my long sword, ho!”

“A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?” His wife cries.

He steps out of the carriage unarmed, and sees, not far down the street, Lord Montague doing the same. “My sword, I say. Old Montague is come and flourishes his blade in spite of me.” Rushed, she presents him his sword.

Unbeknownst to him, Lord Montague remains caught half-out of his carriage, with his own wife clutching rigidly to his leg. “Thou villain Capulet!” He cries, and to Lady Montague: “Hold me not; let me go.”

“Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe!” She asserts.

At the center of the brawl, the gleam in Tybalt’s eye is brighter by the second, and Benvolio is starting to lose grip. A third carriage rides in and the horses all but run into the fighters. The door opens and out comes a bright dark-haired figure, who would give the air of royalty were it not for the fact he trips stepping out and skins his knee, requiring help from his servant and a moment’s breath to recollect himself.

Prince Escalus, attire now completely ruined, clears his throat and calls attention. “Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, profaners of this neighbor-stainèd steel—will they not hear?”

Ashamed, those who had not already put their weapons down did so.

“You men, you beasts that quench the fire of your pernicious rage with purple fountains issuing from your veins: on pain of torture, from those bloody hands throw your mistempered weapons to the ground, and hear the sentence of your movèd prince.” He looks round. Everyone now seems to be fully attentive.

With the sigh of an exhausted and hurt parent whose nap was recently interrupted, he issues his proclamation. “Three,” he starts, “ _three_ civil brawls bred of an airy word by _thee,_ old Capulet, and Montague,” he eyes Lord Capulet, standing stupidly limp outside his carriage, and Lord Montague, with a foot still in his, “have thrice disturbed the quiet of our streets and made Verona’s ancient citizens cast by their grave-beseeming ornaments to wield old partisans in hands as old, cankered with peace, to part your cankered hate. If ever you disturb our streets again, your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.” Prince Escalus says with authority. “For this time all the rest depart away. _You,_ Capulet, shall go along with me, and, Montague, come you this afternoon to know our farther pleasure in this case, to old Free-town, our common judgment-place.”

Now suddenly ashamed, as children with games caught going too far are, the Montagues and Capulets alike all wither. By now the citizens have backed far away.

“Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.”

They do. Well, all but a select few Montagues. Lord Montague motions to his nephew, and Benvolio walks, sword dragging, up to his uncle’s carriage.

“Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?” Lord Montague asks. “Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?”

Well, he can hardly deny an explanation. “Here were the servants of your adversary, and yours, close fighting ere I did approach. I drew to _part_ them…” He shakes his head. “In the instant came the fiery Tybalt with his sword prepared, which, as he breathed defiance to my ears, he swung about his head and cut the winds, who, nothing hurt withal, hissed him in scorn. While we were interchanging thrusts and blows came more and more and fought on part and part, till the Prince came, who parted either part.”

Lord Montague opens his mouth to speak but is cut off by his wife before he begins. “O, where is Hamlet?” She leans out of the carriage. “Saw you him today? Right glad I am he was not at this fray.”

Her husband seems disturbed by the innocent question. Lately, he’s been on edge whenever his son is brought up. It’s guilt in its simplest form, guilt that will soon be made apparent its source.

Benvolio stops to consider just what information he should give her. “Madam, an hour before the worshipped sun peeled forth the golden window of the east, a...troubled mind,” (though he does not give for what his mind was troubled, it was lovesickness) “drove me to walk abroad, where underneath the grove of sycamore the westward rooteth from this city side, so early walking did I see your son. Towards him I made, but he was ‘ware of me and stole into the covert of the wood.” He did drop a paper; he was writing poetry, largely about death. “I, measuring his affections by my own (which then most sought where most might not be found, being one too many by my weary self), pursued...my humor,” (he went to visit Mercutio, far to the other side of town, but then got caught in a brawl) “not pursuing his, and gladly shunned who gladly fled from me.”

Lord Montague rolls his eyes. “Many a morning hath he there been seen, with tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew, adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs.” (Benvolio smiles despite himself; yes, that does sound like a very Hamlet thing to do.) “But all so soon as the all-cheering sun should in the farthest east begin to draw the shady curtains from Aurora’s bed, away from light steals home my heavy... _son_ , and private in his chamber pens himself, shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out, and makes himself an artificial night. Black and portentous must this humor prove, unless good counsel may the cause remove.”

Benvolio neglects to mention Hamlet’s hated the sunlight since as far back as he could remember. Surely his uncle is much like other parents, not being well aware of their own children’s habits. And a humor of this sort is a little dramatic, even for Hamlet. “My noble uncle, do you know the cause?”

“I neither know it nor can learn of him.”

“Have you importuned him by any means?”

“Both by myself and many other friends. But he, his own affections’ counselor, is to himself.” Benvolio winces; surely Lord Capulet did not approach the topic delicately. “I will not say how true, but to himself so secret and so close, so far from sounding and discovery, as is the bud bit with an envious worm ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air or dedicate his beauty to the same. Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow, we would as willingly give cure as know.”

Well, Ben’s overdue for a conversation with his cousin. Nowadays he’s the only decent audience for his soliloquies.

Speaking of the devil, he approaches.

“See where he comes.” Benvolio points out. “So please you, step aside. I’ll know his grievance or be much denied.”

“I would thou wert so happy by thy stay to hear true shrift.” Lord Montague looks relieved at the prospect of not dealing with his son. “Come, madam, let’s away.”

The carriage leaves. Benvolio stands in an empty street, and he’s suspicious the lonely aesthetic of that scene is what makes Hamlet approach him.

“Good morrow, cousin.” He greets.

Hamlet seems in another one of his dazes. “Is the day so young?”

“But new struck nine.”

“Ay me, sad hours seem long.” He sighs. “Was that my father that went hence so fast?”

He strongly considers lying. Broaching the topic of his fathers’ neglect always worsens his moods, but in this case, he was prompted to leave. “It was. What sadness lengthens Hamlet’s hours?”

“Not having that which, having, makes them short.”

“In love?” He guesses (or maybe that’s just what’s on his mind).

“Out—”

“Of love?”

Hamlet stares at him, then vigorously shakes his head. “No!” He corrects. “Out of joy.”

“Ay, marry, that’s far trickier.”

“To be merry indeed. How dost thee do it, dear cousin?”

“What?”

“Be merry.”

He realizes, from his sober expression, that his cousin is being serious. He laughs. “I do not.”

“And yet you give the air of not being...not being so. Ay, Ben, your countenance…” he waves a hand, choosing his words, “your countenance may not be merry, but ‘tis thoughtful, ‘tis full. One might say your spirit glows.”

Benvolio shakes his head and puts a hand on Hamlet’s shoulder, leading him down the street, back home. “What color?”

“Hm?”

“Tell me, what color glows my spirit?”

“Ah,” he hadn’t considered, “a bright one, undoubtedly. An enrapturing hue, not quite red, but warm. Yellow, but dull, the sun when it peeks in lines over the horizon.”

“At dawn or at dusk?”

“Dawn. Our royal Mercutio is the dusk to your dawn, I’m inclined to believe.”

Of course he had to be perceptive. Benvolio parries once more today. “The sun quite alike to when I saw a vagabond poet but this morning?” He pulls Hamlet’s dropped poetry from his pocket. “I did find myself enraptured by this here sonnet, left by a man to whom I believe I have no relation.”

Hamlet rips the paper from his hand and investigates it. “Ah, how quaint! A shame we don’t know its author.”

He frowns seriously. “I did fancy it, Hamlet, if heavy.”

“...I’m certain its author would take it to heart.” Hamlet hands him the paper again. “Breathe not a word of this to my father.”

“Ay. Though I know not why.”

They walk in silence for but a moment before Hamlet breaks it.

“Know you, coz, why so thoroughly I am plagued with storm-clouds?”

“I must admit I do not.”

“My father your uncle forbids me from attending to the interest of that which I tend to best.”

“Why, study?”

He nods. “Ay, study.” Benvolio suspects the reason is clear, but refuses to ask until Hamlet admits. “I had been wrong to assume the path of a scholar would make itself clear to me so soon after I shed the cloak of a woman,” he starts, and Ben gives him a sympathetic look. “No, dear coz, look at me not with eyes of pity, for those appear too alike to mine own. I had been wrong to assume the donning of a man’s character, the anguished deepening of a soft voice would suffice to cut the tendrils of my black-hearted father. Instead, I have stirred them; I have given him a half-hearted son, a dreamer, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. I will never forget the way he speaks to me, though I busy myself in my locked tower counting wolves. Nay, dear cousin, in his pitiful—for they are pitiful, where yours are pitying, though the former grips me ceaselessly, the latter throws my stomach—in his pitiful eyes I am neither the damsel in distress nor the charming prince, neither the lady of the lake nor the great king to claim his sword. Surely no sword is to be found on me! Nay, in me, more like. Where no charming tales lie in me, saucy ones stir; in him I am the dragon guard, the fiendish pixie, the murderous ogre.”

“Oh, Hamlet, surely you are wrong!”

“Surely? Pray, coz, tell me surely, whether ‘tis nobler to thrust myself upon mine own sword or anticipate the hand of my father on my throat, to play the Roman or the Greek! Why tease myself? I will study neither. Saw you how he ran? When his blade scrapes my neck, I will be burned and patched over, a blemish on the family tree. Saw you how he ran! The frenzy of a man willing to kill his son for not being his son. Be merry, Ben, for surely I will die the way she, being the mask I wore before me, did, in hiding, and blacken the leaves no longer.”

“Were he to show sign of such intent I would sooner kill mine own uncle than let him lay hand on your throat!” Benvolio likes to think of himself as having his act together. He doesn’t. “Though not in the same fashion, I, too, am a fallen leaf, I’m inclined to believe.”

“Ah, but hope, Benvolio, that makes the dawn. With a dusk, no rising sun can truly walk alone.”

“Be wary. My brave dusk knows not my fancy.” He blushes. They walk on, and where Benvolio thrives in the morning, Hamlet covers his head as the sun grows higher.

\---

The home of the Capulets. Enter: Lord Capulet, Paris, and a servingman, named Peter. Capulet and Paris are in the middle of a conversation about giving the former’s child up for marriage. Well, son, really. You will read the words “she” and “daughter,” note these terms are wholly inaccurate for the same reason Hamlet thinks his father wants to kill him (and the same reason he is correct, the reason his father is already plagued with guilt).

(Peter is having a good day. His wife found a great stew recipe.)

“But Montague is bound as well as I, in penalty alike, and ‘tis not hard, I think, for men so old as we to keep the peace.” Lord Capulet argues.

Paris is charmingly dull, but smarter than him, that is, enough to understand he’s wrong. “Of honorable reckoning are you both, and pity ‘tis you lived at odds so long.” Oh, but he’s done with this topic. He’s here for a reason. “But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?”

“But saying o’er what I have said before. My child is yet a stranger in the world. She hath not seen the change of eighteen years. Let two more summers wither in their pride ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.”

“Two more—” Paris takes a second. He chooses not to comment on the fact that, in this age, that’s very old to be unmarried, and he is more alike in age to him than other suitors. “Younger than she are happy mothers made.” He says, though the thought gives him shivers.

Truly, he intends no harm. The child they speak of is one of odd standing in the Capulet house, as he has the very unwomanly tendencies to behave, and sometimes dress like, a man (god forbid! He is one). In other words, this indicates open-mindedness, so Paris is attuned to the fact that Lord Capulet’s child is probably, for lack of a better word, _chill._ Paris needs that; he needs someone who wouldn’t judge him nor expect any affection. Mostly, he needs someone to point to to get his dad off his back, because he’s starting to get suspicious of Paris’ romantic disinterest in women and the way his gaze lingers when dashing young men pass him in the street. In modern terms, he’s looking for a beard.

(Which he probably wouldn’t find in a gay man, but he’s yet to know that part.)

He _was_ going to explain and ask directly, if it weren’t for Lord Capulet being an overprotective father. This angers him. Already having to convince the father and he hasn’t even met the guy yet.

“And too soon marred are those so early made. Earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she; she’s the hopeful lady of my earth. But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart; my will to her consent is but a part. And, she agreed, within her scope of choice lies my consent and fair according voice.” He turns to eye Paris, as if about to let him in on a secret. “This night I hold an old accustomed feast, whereto I have invited many a guest such as I love; and you among the shore, one more, most welcome, makes my number more. At my poor house look to behold this night Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light. Such comfort as do lusty young men feel when well-appareled April on the heel of limping winter treads, even such delight among fresh fennel buds shall you this night inherit at my house. Hear all, all see, and like her most whose merit most shall be; which, on more view of many, mine, being one, may stand in number, though in reck’ning none. Come go with me.”

He hands Peter a list. This one looks to be a rager. If only Peter could read it.

“Go, sirrah, trudge about through fair Verona, find those persons out whose names are written here, and to them say: my house and welcome on their pleasure stay.”

Paris looks delighted; that said, this is more at the prospect of enjoying a Capulet party, which are famously and infamously sick. Peter runs out to follow Capulet’s commands.

“Find them out whose names are written here!” says Peter to himself with growing concern. “It is written that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil and the painter with his nets. But I am sent to find those persons whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ.” He looks at the list once more, as if sheer willpower will grant him that which takes years to even vaguely comprehend. “I must to the learned. In good time!”

Peter runs out, still illiterate, his day suddenly less good. He just wants some of his wife’s stew.

Walking cluelessly through Verona, Peter sees two men who look rich, and therefore, literate. He is right, and they are, however, he’s very new at his job. And those who are new, those who are both new and not of Capulet or Montague blood have not yet learned to filter members of either family from a crowd. As it happens, these lucky literates are Benvolio and Hamlet Montague, who have since had and passed a small argument about Benvolio’s affections, and moved back to one of Hamlet’s problems.

“Tut, man,” says Benvolio, “one may achieve better with tutors that which supposed scholars do in years of schooling. Suppose yourself lucky to be free of the labors of love, or suitors, your flame fed with the love of learning. Keep it burning how you seek, scavenge kindling for your heat.”

Hamlet stops walking. He kicks Benvolio in the shin, earning a yelp from his cousin.

“Ah!”

“Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.”

“For _what_ , I pray thee?”

“For your broken shin.” Hamlet says, and walks again.

He huffs, and follows, with a slight limp now. “Why Hamlet, art thou mad?”

“Not mad, ay, perhaps mad, but bound more than a madman is, shut up in prison, kept without my food, whipped and tormented, and—” He notices the servingman approaching. “Good e’en, good fellow.”

Peter bows. “God gi’ good e’en. I pray, sir, can you read?”

Hamlet nods. “Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.”

“Perhaps you have learned it without book. But I pray, can you read anything you see?”

“Ay, if I know the letters and the language.”

Peter sighs and starts to leave, misinterpreting Hamlet’s dramatics. “You say honestly. Rest you merry.”

“Stay, fellow, I can read.” Peter presents the letter, and he tilts his head to read aloud. “ _Signior Martino and his wife and daughters, County Anselme and his beauteous sisters, the lady widow of Vitruvio, Signior Placentio and his lovely nieces, Mercutio,_ ” he looks up to smirk at Ben, “ _and his brother Valentine, mine…_ ” in a split second he realizes the family this is written from, “ _mine Uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters, my fair niece Rosaline and Livia, Signior Valentio and his cousin,_ ” he winces, “ _Tybalt, Lucio and the lively Helena._ A fair assembly. Whither should they come?”

“Up.” Peter says simply.

“Whither? To supper?”

Oh, supper. Now he’s just thinking of stew. “To our house.”

“Whose house?”

“My master’s.”

He smiles innocently. “Indeed I should have asked thee that before.”

Peter, thoughts filled with stew, heart filled with naivete, figures he should at least invite the poor man and his friend for helping him. “Now I’ll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich Capulet, and, if you be not of the house of Montagues,” he says, to Hamlet and Benvolio Montague, “I pray come and crush a cup of wine, in dress, lest you ruin the theme of the masque. Rest you merry.”

With that, Peter leaves, unaware of the look Benvolio and Hamlet share.

Hamlet puts an arm around his cousin’s shoulder. “At this same ancient feast of Capulet’s sups the handsome Mercutio whom thou so loves. Go thither, and with keen eye supplant your coil for deserved love.”

Benvolio thinks he’s making rather a large deal of this whole thing, and that that idea’s hopeless anyway, but he’s looking for an excuse to get Hamlet out of the house. “I will not, while you shut out even the dimmest of stars and hide under covers in melancholy as I play the fool.”

“Know this: that man is the fool.”

“Ay, thoroughly, yet one who makes my clock stir. It has been years, has it not?” He shakes his head. “Too much of this. If I am to attend as a Montague, you are to come with. Allow me the attempt of distracting you from your sorrows.”

“What, around people?”

“Ay?”

“I am a shame around the living.”

Ben rubs his sore shin and fixes his hair. “As the black spots of the Montague house, otherwise fair, we stick to each other like burs to hair. Yes? Allow me, who, marry, seeks to be merry, to show you a night where you may hardly remember your father’s slight.” He pauses. “Were it nothing else, allow for the grace of Capulet liquor to dampen your face.”

Hamlet gives in. “I’ll go along, no such merriness in my sight, but for the gift of being far separate from my father’s spite.”

Satisfied, they continue to the Montague house, where they send a letter to Mercutio with a notice they will stop by to prepare their outfits for the party.

\---

The Capulet house, once more, but the second story this time. Lady Capulet sits awaiting her daughter (who will never come, as she has no daughter).

“Nurse, where’s my daughter? Call her forth to me.” She commands the nurse.

“Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old, I bade her come!” Horatio’s (for that is the name of the son of the Capulets) nurse reassures her. She remains, too, blind to the gender of the young man, though she has her suspicions. “What, lamb!” She calls. “What, flower! God forbid. Where’s this girl? What, ladybird!”

Horatio skids down the hall, not gracefully; his form and mark is one of a teenager who just woke up. And he did, as evidenced, if nothing else, by his askew hair. “How now, who calls?”

“Your mother.” Says the nurse, having accomplished the deed of waking him without having to physically shake him from bed; a rarity.

He turns to his mother. “Madam, I am here. What is your will?”

Lady Capulet may not know her son that well, but he knows when he will take issue with something, which is usually always. “That is the matter. Nurse, give leave awhile. We must talk in secret.” She pauses. “Oh, nurse, come back again. I have remembered me, thou ‘s hear our counsel. Thou knowest my daughter’s of a pretty age.”

The nurse chews her lip, and goes for the sentimental act. “Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.”

“She’s not eighteen.”

Horatio, meanwhile, thinks this is all rather rude. He’s right here, honestly.

“I’ll lay eighteen of my teeth she’s not eighteen.” Says the nurse. Horatio, of course, knows she hasn’t got eighteen teeth at this point, only four; since he knocked out an adult canine falling from a tree at eleven, he took it upon himself to count and catalogue the teeth of everyone he knows and, should he find any missing, ask how their mouth reached that state. “Marry, I remember it well. ‘Tis since the earthquake now fifteen years, and since she was weaned, I shall never forget, of all days of the year, upon that day, for I had then laid wormwood to my duf, sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall. My lord and you were then at Mantua. Nay, I do bear a brain. But, as I said, when it did taste the wormwood on the nipple of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, to see it tetchy and fall out with the dug. ‘Shake,’ quoth the dovehouse. ‘Twas no need, I trow, to bid me trudge.”

Horatio likes the nurse, but could deal without her superfluous stories of breastfeeding.

“And since that time it is fifteen years! For then she could stand high-lone. Nay, by th’ rood, she could have run and waddled all about, for even the day before, she broke her brow, and then my husband—god be with his soul, he was a merry man—took up the child. ‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘Dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit, wilt thou not, babe?’ And, by my holidam, the pretty wretch left crying and said ‘Ay.’ To see now how a jest shall come about! I warrant, an I should live a thousand years, I never should forget it.”

Lady Capulet is bored out of her mind. Feeling the end of her story, she starts to speak.

“I—”

“‘Wilt thou not, babe?’ quoth he. And, pretty fool, it stinted and said ‘Ay!’” She repeated.

Lady Capulet fumes. “Enough of this! I pray thee, hold thy peace.”

“Yes, madam, yet I cannot choose but laugh to think it should leave crying and say ‘Ay.’ And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow a bump as big as a young cock’rel’s stone, a perilous knock, and it cried bitterly. ‘Yea,’ quoth my husband. ‘Fall’st upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age, wilt thou not, babe?’ It stinted and said ‘Ay.’”

Horatio sighs. “And stint thou, too, I pray thee, nurse, say I.”

“Peace. I have done. God mark thee to his grace, thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nursed. An I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish.”

“Aha!” Cries Lady Capulet, volume rising, and pointing at the nurse. “Marry, that ‘marry’ is the very theme I came to talk of.” She turns to Horatio. “Tell me, daughter, how stands your disposition to be married?”

He tries not to contort his face too much. “It is an honor that I dream not of.” Truly, he dreams not of it, since the thought of being someone’s wife feels incorrect.

The nurse pipes up again. “An honor? Were I not thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst sucked wisdom from thy teat!”

His mother waves her off. “Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you, far younger than you here in Verona, ladies of esteem, are made already mothers. By my count I was your mother much upon these years that you are so ready a maid. Thus, then, in brief: the valiant Paris seeks you for his love.”

The nurse gasps. “A _man_ , young lady, lady, such a man as all the world—why, he’s a man of wax.”

“I would that wax were to melt in the sun.” Horatio mutters. The word _mother_ is ringing painfully in his ears.

“Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.” Lady Capulet corrects him, as coldly as an impatient tutor.

“Nay, he’s a flower, in faith,” says the nurse, lost in thought, “a very flower.”

She would do better than he as a wife, he thinks. Let him marry her, if it’s eagerness he seeks.

“What say you?” Asks his mother, who he doesn’t really think of as his mother, not most of the time. “Can you love the gentleman? This night you shall behold him at our feast. Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face, and find delight writ there with beauty’s pen. Examine every married lineament and see how one another lends content, and what obscured in this fair volume lies find written in the margent of his eyes. This precious book of love, this unbound lover, to beautify him only lacks a cover. The fish lives in the sea, and ‘tis much pride for fair without the fair within to hide. That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory that in gold clasps locks in the golden story. So shall you share all that he doth possess by having him, making yourself no less.”

As she now appears lost in her own as well, Horatio’s starting to wonder if his mother would be a better candidate. He’s also starting to wonder whether or not it’s worth it to investigate this Paris to see just how easily he could stab him were he to make a move, but mostly the first thing.

“No less?” Pipes the nurse. “Nay, bigger! Women grow by men.”

“Ay, but in the dark men grow by women.” Horatio comments; he can’t resist. The nurse’s eyes sparkle with pride.

Lady Capulet sighs. “Speak briefly. Can you like of Paris’ love?”

He puts forth the most open-ended answer he can: “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move. But no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly.”

She seems satisfied. Even with the nurse’s ramblings, their timing is good; a servingman, or rather, the servingman, or rather Peter, who’s been working all day and is rather sick of it, comes up the stairs to report.

“Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in extremity. I must hence to wait. I beseech you, follow straight.”

“We follow thee.” Lady Capulet assures him.

“Mother, I have just awoken.” Horatio thought she knew this by the state of his everything. “Pray you, go ahead, give me time to dress.”

“Come anon, when you do.” She says, and leaves without breathing another word.

The thing is, Horatio is almost certain she’ll soon be drunk enough and won’t seek him out, will hardly recognize him at the party, so long as he doesn’t come from inside the house. He waits until both of them are away, takes a few careful steps back, then turns and almost sprints to his chambers.

In the back of his wardrobe, tucked neatly away, is an outfit sewn carefully of a kind tailor’s leftover fabric. It is designed for a man, covering, yet flattering, with gold trim; a simple ensemble. Beside it sits a mask he commissioned for this event, full-faced, with careful designs around the eyes and across the bridge of the nose, the rest left blank white.

He puts them on with care, pins his long hair in a cap, and looks in the mirror. It is not the first time he’s tried any of these articles, but the first time they all came together. He’s hardly recognizable. Most importantly, he’s not in a flowing dress, which makes it easier to climb down from the balcony without too much struggle.

Once down, he dusts himself off, pulls his mask up completely, and heads around the house to the front door, ready to act the innocent and mysterious guest just arriving.

\---

Two other mysterious guests (with a third who cannot count as mysterious as he was actually invited) are, in fact, well past late, still preparing in the royal house. Valentine left a while ago.

“What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?” Asks Hamlet to Benvolio, pulling down his dark pointed half-faced mask. “Or shall we on without apology?”

Benvolio doesn’t look up; he’s sitting on Mercutio’s bed, trying to fix his collar. “The date is out of such prolixity. We’ll have no Cupid hoodwinked with a scarf, bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath, scaring the ladies like a crowkeeper, no, nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke after the prompter, for our entrance. Should they look upon us and recognize the mark of the family in our stride, let them measure us by what they will. We’ll measure them a measure and be gone.”

He squints through the mask, eyes adjusting to the limited vision. “Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling. Being but heavy, I will bear the light.”

Their company, the third in their group, none other than their longtime friend Mercutio, nephew to the Prince, lays an affectionate hand on Hamlet’s hair and ruffles it teasingly. “Nay, gentle Hamlet, we must have you dance.” His voice is one of those which sounds as if it’s constantly singing.

“Not I! Believe me. You have dancing shoes with nimble soles. I have a soul of lead, so stakes me to the ground I cannot move.”

Mercutio tilts his head. He’s applying red to his lips. “You think yourself the devil. Even Satan has wings, with which he flies through his circles and rests in his tenth; borrow infernal wings and soar with them above a common bound.”

“I am far too burned with the fires of his kingdom, yet not entering, which lends its gifts to me in bad dreams.” Hamlet says. Dare he share? “Nay, do not think me heavy but for my studies, for ere we arrived I found my father, wicked roots supplanting in my house.”

“Roots wicked how? With rot?” Mercutio asks, playing along.

“Ay,” says Hamlet, “if rot I may be, diseasing the plant which in tended gardens grow.”

“Methinks the plant is less rotted and more starved of sun. What say your father?”

“What say he? He hath no need for words.” Hamlet makes a wide arc with his arms, as if clearing the stage for an act. “Nay, do not think he, who so ties me to Verona, hath any use for words, words, words! He speaks simply, though not to me, and not to his dear wife, nay, but his heart reveals itself in the sorrow of his face; he grieves, like me, but so unlike me for a daughter he never had.” He says, then simply: “Blood embosses blood.”

It went simply like this: Benvolio left, and Hamlet, too, to raid his wardrobe for a potentially decent costume. On his way, however, he heard the hushed voice of his father speaking to a servant in the hallway. Before he left to talk of peace with the Prince, it seems he was putting his own plan into place. Hamlet hadn’t heard the scheme in detail, but enough to process its theme: he is to be killed tomorrow morning. Lord Montague will send out murderers for him.

Anyway, he felt himself a little accomplished that he was right, even if about such a macabre topic. But he doesn’t want to tell these two of it. They’re going to have a nice night. They’re going to stop dancing around each other, and start dancing with each other. If they knew he’s certain, that he heard this with his own ears, they’d put all their effort towards saving him. He doesn’t think he’s worth that.

Benvolio frowns. Mercutio leans in front of him, eyes studying with a glint of gold. “Know you this with absolute surety?”

Hamlet pauses. He could. He could tell them, and let them convict his father, let them hide him away in safety. “Nay,” he says, “‘tis but a worry.”

“I prithee, if you so worried be, go not to your home tonight.”

“And to what assumptions leave my mother?” Hamlet smiles. “She is a testy woman, though I a vile knave, who weaves a matronly love for her infernal babe.”

“To her assumptions leave her; she knows thy tendency and subscription. Surely you are not o’er wrought with the mad addiction of the devilish Mercutio.”

“How ill you speak of yourself.”

“How ill! Nay, I am a cunning lad, I wear my shroud with pride; you, Hamlet, lend yourself an unfriendly ear, yet I am already beside you.”

“A sentiment bordering dusk,” Hamlet comments, eyeing Bevolio, who freezes up, “and I the deep of night.”

“Drink only deeply tonight.” Mercutio calls his servant into the room. “Give me a case to put my visage in.”

“Mercutio, what shroud wear you?” Benvolio pipes up.

“Why, a visor. And one for you.” Mercutio hands Ben his mask; upon hearing of the party, and seeing his two friends at the door, he hurriedly had costumes put together for them, creating his own color schemes based on what he felt would pair best with their undertones. Though they came with their own clothes, he’s making them wear these. It’s all of the utmost importance to him, and that’s probably one of the most important things to know about Mercutio. “Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.”

“Nay, I mean the visor not. But thank you. What shroud wear you with pride?” He takes the mask, and stares it blankly in the eye.

“Don you not your shroud?”

“Ay, in pinks and violets and blues, for tenderness, for compassion, for sorrow,” he mutters, and, remembering his countenance, “in yellows, for the rising sun.”

“Here.” Mercutio climbs onto the bed and sits on his knees. He holds a hand out for the mask, and Benvolio gives it to him so he can suffix it neatly on his face. If his hands linger, it is conscious. “Come, we burn daylight, ho!” He turns away and practically leaps in the air.

Hamlet is still trying to fix his hair. “Nay, that’s not so.” It is well past dusk.

“I mean, sir, in delay we waste our lights; in vain, light lights by day. Take our good meaning, for our judgement sits five times in that ere once in our five wits.”

All three prepared, they leave the room in a row, and make their way out of the palace, down the darkening streets of Verona.

“We mean well, in going to this masque, but ‘tis not wit to go,” says Benvolio. Beside him, Hamlet flares. He is _not_ about to let his cousin’s anxieties hinder his cousin having fun.

“Why, may one ask?” Mercutio says.

Benvolio mulls over what to say; he can’t be honest, as that would clearly admit his feelings, but he can’t back out of his admittance now. “I dreamt a dream tonight.”

“And so did I.”

“Well, what was yours?”

“That dreamers often lie.”

He retorts. “In bed asleep while they do dream things true.”

“Oh, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you!” Mercutio runs in front of them and points a finger at Ben, and, realizing this could apply to Hamlet’s worry as well, puts up another at Hamlet. “Both of you! She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomi over men’s noses as they lie asleep!”

He has to pause to inhale. He’s getting frenzied. One of the things his friends love about Mercutio is his unpredictability and quickness to become crazed, but this is also something they fear. Benvolio finds it endearing. Hamlet finds it relatable.

“Her wagon spokes made of long spinners’ legs!” He says, crossing his fingers over each other to try and fail to form wheels, “The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, her traces of the smallest spider web, her collars of the moonshine’s wat’ry beams, her whip,” he wildly takes a stance and mimics a whip, “of cricket’s bone, the lash of film, her wagoner a small gray-coated gnat, not half so big as a round little worm pricked from the lazy finger of a maid!”

They stare at him. Now in public, he’s making a scene, but if anyone’s alright with that it’s Mercutio.

“Her chariot is an empty hazelnut, made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers! And, and, and,” he grasps for words, “in this state she gallops night by night through lovers’ brains, and they dream of love; on courtiers’ knees,” he steps forward and gently kicks Bevolio’s knee, “that dream on cur’sies straight; o’er lawyers’ fingers,” he spreads his own hands, and takes the opportunity to grab both of Benvolio’s, “who straight dream on fees; o’er ladies’ lips…”

He pauses. He’s staring at Benvolio’s lips. But Hamlet’s around. They’re in public. He lets go and starts walking again, tying to rebuild momentum.

“O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream, which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose, and then dreams he of smelling out a suit. And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail, tickling a pason’s nose as he lies asleep; then!” He’s built it. “Then he dreams of another benefice!” He starts talking faster. “Sometime she driveth o’er a soldiers neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, or breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of health five fathom deep, and then anon drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes and, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two and sleeps again! That is the very Mab that plats the manes of horses in the night and bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, which once untangled much misfortune bodes!” He’s near screaming. “This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, that presses them and learns them first to bear, making them women of good carriage! This is she—”

Benvolio puts a hand to his chest. “Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace.” He had to stop him, he got too worked up. “Thou talk’st of nothing.”

He did talk of something. He meant to, anyway, he did, he did. His eyes shake, and his breathing is heavy. “True, I talk of dreams.” He doesn’t know if that’s meant to be directed at himself or not. If Benvolio didn’t catch a lick of that, it must just be a dream.

“I talk of dreams,” he restarts, “which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy,” he backs away, and is calm again, a trace of sorrow lining his face, “which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind, who woos even now the frozen bosom of the north and, being angered, puffs away from thence, turning his side to the dew-dropping south.”

Benvolio tries to act normal. “This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves. Supper is done, and we shall come too late.”

Neither Ben nor Mercutio speak, but Hamlet hopes they will at the party, when he is out of their way.

 _I fear we come too early,_ he thinks, _for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date with this night’s revels, and expire the term of a despised life closed in my breast by some vile forfeit of untimely death._

_But he that hath the steerage of my course, direct my sail._

**\---**

As the party starts, the cooks rush about the kitchen, and the servants scuttle around frantically, laying food on the tables. None of these servants are Peter. Peter has been given the rest of the night off.

One looks around and taps another on the shoulder. “Where’s Potpan that he helps not to take away? He shift a trencher? He scrape a trencher?”

The other shakes his head. “When good manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands, and they unwashed too, ‘tis a foul thing.” He sighs, and picks up another plate.

“Away with the joint stools, remove the court cupboard, look to the plate.” The first is having none of this. He turns to another. “Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane, and, as thou loves me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell.” He turns round, and sees two more servants he recognizes. “Anthony and Potpan!”

“Ay, boy, ready.” Says Anthony.

The head servant doesn’t look too happy about being called ‘boy.’ “You are looked for and called for, asked for and sought for, in the great chamber.”

Anthony makes frustrated motions from the head servant to the empty air behind him. “We cannot be here and there too! Cheerly, boys! Be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all.”

They rush back to the kitchens, bickering.

Over time, the partygoers arrive in costume; they’ve all taken the occasion to be super extra, decked out in the finest of silks and sequins. Lord Capulet lets more trickle in (including his son, who, now filled with fear of recognition, ducks against the walls), greets with uneasy peace the relatives of the prince, Valentine and his brother Mercutio, and pays no mind to Mercutio’s mysterious friends that linger behind him, as they don’t introduce themselves. After all, doesn’t that take away the point of it all? They have the right to remain anonymous, he thinks. He doesn’t notice how stiff Valentine is, who keeps glancing at the two, nor does he know the earlier conversation the two brothers had:

“Wherefore bring you these two Montagues to a Capulet masque?” Said Valentine. “You know the longtime feud between these households.”

“Ay, but know you not they are not to fight under our uncle’s wrath?”

“I fear still for their temperament.”

Mercutio smiles with ease and elbows his brother. “Calm yourself, Val, thou knowest these are mine _friends._ Benvolio is mine most loyal and loving one, at that, and there are days wherein I may tolerate Hamlet.”

Now, guests having arrived, Lord Capulet taps a spoon to his glass. “Welcome, gentlemen. Ladies that have their toes unplagued with corns will walk about with you. Ah, my mistresses, which of you all will now deny me to dance? She that makes dainty, she, I’ll swear, hath corns! Am I come near you now?” He glances at the women who stand listening, now slightly uncomfortable for being called to attention. “Welcome, gentlemen. I have seen the day that I have worn a visor and could tell a whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear, such as would please. ‘Tis gone, ‘tis gone, ‘tis gone. You are welcome, gentlemen.”

He pauses, and turns with authority to the musicians. “Come, musicians, play. A hall, a hall, give room! And foot it, girls.”

The attendees start dancing, first with reluctance, then with wild abandon. Lord Capulet walks about commanding the servants. “More light, you knaves, and turn the tables up, and quench the fire; the room is grown too hot. Ah! Sirrah, this unlooked-for sport comes well.” He sees his cousin; it must already be time to make small talk. “Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet,” he stops his dancing, “for you and I are past our dancing days. How long is ‘t now since last yourself and I were in a mask?”

His cousin has to think. “B ‘r Lady, thirty years!”

“What, man, ‘tis not so much, ‘tis not so much! ‘Tis since...the nuptial of Lucentio!” He has to remember. “Come Pentecost as quickly as it will, some five and twenty years, and then we masked.”

He shakes his head. They’re getting old. “‘Tis more, ‘tis more. His son is elder, sir. His son is thirty.”

Lord Capulet chokes on his drink. “Will you tell me that? His son was but a ward two years ago!”

They get caught up in arguing a timeline, and for a while forget the rest of the crowd.

Horatio is not the only one who sticks to the wall; in this day and age, it’s tough keeping an artistic melancholy when everyone around is having fun. Somewhere in the crowd, Paris makes note of a stiff-postured Tybalt, unaware of his surroundings, as he is closely studying Hamlet.

Hamlet, moving further out of the light, notices a leaning figure with the same idea he had. He moves to speak with him, when Horatio momentarily removes his visor to get a breath of fresh air; full-faced masks are stuffy, and he doesn’t think anyone’s watching. His breath hitches, and he stops, quickly looking away in panic.

Oh no, he thinks. He’s hot.

Someone spills a drink on Tybalt, and when he’s swallowed his immediate urge to yell and done ensuring her it does little harm to a dark outfit, Hamlet’s disappeared. He’s off talking to a servant.

“What man is that who doth give noble air as a brave knight?” Hamlet asks, pointing to Horatio discreetly over his shoulder.

The servant squints. By now, his mask is down again, and he’s too far in the darkness. “I know not, sir.”

“O, he doth teach the torches to burn bright!” Hamlet whispers to himself. Met with the confused frown of the servant, he urges him away. He continues. “So passion’s slave I am with naive slight.”

Behind him, Tybalt found him again. He leans closer to try and confirm his suspicion of Hamlet’s identity.

He continues unaware. “In my heart’s core touches he, I long his voice to grace my ear, his beauty too rich for use, for Earth too dear. So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows as yonder gentleman o’er his ladies shows. The measure done, I’ll watch his place of stand, and, touching his, make blessed my rude hand. Dare I? Ay. Did I await the kiss of Death before? I prithee, wait, ‘tis for the kiss of this man my heart aches.”

He gathers himself, having given himself the allowance of waxing poetic about a man he’s never spoken with. He walks over. It’s time to pretend to be human.

“This, by his voice, should be a Montague.” Tybalt backs up horrified, into a woman, and, apologizing, runs off to his uncle. “Fetch me my rapier, boy.” He taps a servant on the shoulder, and speaks to Lord Capulet. “What, dares the slave come hither covered with an antic face to fleer and scorn at our solemnity? Now, by the stock and honor of my kin, to strike him dead I hold it not a sin.”

Lord Capulet is just a bit too drunk for this. He puts both hands on his nephews shoulders and steers him to a seat to calm himself. “Why, how now, kinsman? Wherefore storm you so?”

“Uncle, this is a Montague!” He motions across the way. “Our foe! A villain that is hither come in spite to scorn at our solemnity this night.”

“Young Hamlet is it?” He knows the names of some Montagues, at least. Hamlet came as a surprise; after his “sister’s” “death,” he supposedly returned to the house of the Montagues, having been kidnapped at a young age. The Montagues had been so distraught and embarrassed when he was gone they refused to even speak of their late daughter’s brother until he returned. It is a wild tale, and one of the few things he grants them sympathy for. Of course, it is all a lie. A very well rehearsed one, though, being crafted by Hamlet himself after he was fed up with multiple shouting matches over what people would think, etc. Now, if people doubt the story's validity, Lady Montague puts on a great act of fake tears at its remembrance, with a finish of “Thank the Lord he hath returned to my loving arms! My son, my long-lost son!”

“‘Tis he, that villain Hamlet.”

“Content thee, gentle coz,” Lord Capulet decides, “let him alone. He bears him like a portly gentleman, and, to say truth, Verona brags of him to be a virtuous and well-governed youth.” Much unlike Tybalt. “I would not for the wealth of all this town here in my house do him disparagement. Therefore be patient. Take no note of him. It is my will, the which if thou respect, show a fair presence and put off these frowns, an ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.”

“It fits when such a villain is a guest!” He sinks in his seat. “I’ll not endure him.”

“He shall be endured.” Then, at Tybalt’s continued pouting: “What, goodman boy? I say he shall. Go to. Am I the master here or you? Go to. You’ll not endure him! God shall mend my soul, you’ll make a mutiny among my guests, you will set cock-a-hoop, you’ll be the man!”

“Why, uncle, ‘tis a shame!”

“Go to, go to. You are a saucy boy. Is ‘t so indeed? This trick may chance to scathe you. I know what. You must contrary me.” Ah, teenagers! “Marry, ‘tis time—” He pauses to listen to the conversation of his cousin and a nearby friend. “Well said, my hearts.” He turns back to the pouting boy. “You are a princox, go. Be quiet, or—” He interrupts himself again to command a servant. “More light, more light! For shame, Tybalt, I’ll make you quiet.”

Finally, he turns back to the other conversation. “What, cheerly, my hearts!”

Tybalt huffs, and stands up again with disdain. “Patience perforce with willful choler meeting makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.” He mutters to himself, mask up, party over for him, and begins pushing through the crowd to the winding stairs. “I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall, now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall.”

“Why, Tybalt, is it not?” A voice calls. Tybalt turns to catch the caller, and in another instant has a drink spilled on him for a second time that night.

“Oh, mine humblest apology!” He hears. The voice was one of none other than Paris, who, unable to find the Capulet’s daughter, resigned himself to getting progressively drunk and awkwardly refusing the advances of young women. “I only intended to call your attention!”

Tybalt can’t find it in himself to divert his rage to such a petty matter. Montagues to pout about and all that. “‘Tis fine. I was just leaving.”

“Wherefore?”

“I am less welcome in mine own home than my sworn enemy.” He investigates the masked man before him; even with the mask, his handsomeness is clear. Actually, the mask adds to it, almost; the edges on the top taper off into decorated antlers, and the detail on the main portion looks like an abstract deer. He gives the general air of a deer caught in headlights, if cars existed at this time. There’s a few girls who won’t stop staring.

“Your shirt.” Paris comments. “Allow me at least the honest work of washing it.”

“Worry not, the servingmen may tend to it.” Tybalt, taking shallow breaths, tries to leave, and manages to get away from the worst of the crowd.

“Pray tell, what aches thee?” Paris follows him, starting to worry, and pulls up his mask, and Tybalt finally realizes why he felt so familiar.

“I am sorry for ‘t, I did not recognize you. Are you not the fine Paris who seeks to wed my cousin?”

He shrugs, smiling. “Ay, though fine may not be honest.”

“‘Tis!” Tybalt bites his tongue. Paris looks dumbfounded. Fuck. He’s around family, for fuck’s sake. “Then I shall burden you not with my troubles, for I hath heard you to be a good man. Rest you merry.” He starts off again, but Paris grasps his wrist and gently pulls him back.

“I know a sorry state when I see one, as the like may know the like.”

He looks around, suddenly overwhelmed by the number of people. “I must be going, my like has cast me out for the night.” Though growing in discomfort himself, he’s in his mind enough to notice Paris is, too. So he offers: “Should you like to come with, I may move to like that.”

He gives a full-hearted smile this time, and Tybalt thinks it’s unfair that he has dimples. “Very like a gentleman. I would be grateful for some air.”

Paris hasn’t let go of his arm. Noticing this, he does so, but Tybalt catches his hand again to drag him to the counter, pick up another glass of wine, and lead him outside. He was going to find a room to pout in, but a walk now sounds so much better. And, blood cooling, he finds himself shamefully entranced by the young Paris.

Hamlet, like any gay teenager, is very bad at feeling human and very bad at being smooth. When he walks over to Horatio, he realizes with quick mortification he has nothing prepared to say.

“You stand against the wall so finely I should think you to be a statue,” he blurts, and mentally kicks himself. Art, art, he meant to clearly and without mystery call him _art,_ but the words got jumbled somewhere between heart and mouth.

Lucky for him, Horatio briefly wonders if he means what he did, in fact, mean. Unlucky for both, this worries him; if a man really is speaking to him in this way, it must mean he sees him to be a woman. He doesn’t quite know how. “Dost thou mean to mock me?”

“What? Wherefore would I mock thee? If’t be true thou art crossed to mine affection, I am unafraid; we art masked, and lately I’ve carried a sense of wild abandon.” Well, maybe that last thing is because he expects to die the next morning. He reaches a hand out for him, but leaves it hanging in the air. Horatio peers at him through his mask, but makes no move to leave. “But thee seems not to be so opposed. What have I said, that cut thee so? Might I mend the wound?”

Horatio, backtracking, shakes his head, and tries to deepen his voice. “Mine apologies. I did not think—well.”

“Think…?” Hamlet leans closer.

“Thou art brave to try to court a sir in public, if ‘t be true.”

“Ah, thou think'st me brave? In which fashion? Nay, I should not be courageous, as we are both in mask, and I know mineself to be of the cowardly sort, therefore mean you in regards to mine extern?” He grins. “I am flattered.”

Horatio is entertained despite himself. “I certainly do not.” Then, at Hamlet’s mock hurt: “Perhaps in the way a cat may be both dead and alive, I could mean to thine extern.”

“And how could it be so?”

“In a closed box, where it cannot be seen,” he starts, making a box with his hands, “sits the feline, with a fatal poison gripping its veins. While not seeing, we know not whether the creature is yet dead.”

“Wherefore?”

He’s excited to explain. “It is the knowing: we suppose it to be alive, though we assume it to be dead. We cannot see it, ergo, we cannot know. It is both. We last saw it alive, though struck with the poison. Should we take the plunge to believe in the life of a creature we cannot see? Should we assume the animal to lay still with no confirmation? How sure may we be of either possibility? ‘Tis both alive and not.”

“I see.” says Hamlet. A philosophical one, too, that’s all his standards, oh dear. He’s losing it, just a little. “You paint a precarious picture of cats and poison and boxes, though I know not how this connects to mine looks.”

“In the way I know you not to be brave or ugly. Ergo, for now, you are both.”

“Ah!” He puts a hand to his chest and fakes a wound. “This cuts me deep. Dost thou mean to say your affections lie not with men? I’ faith, speak clearly with matters of love.”

Love? Horatio bites his lip in contemplation. “Nay, I say but what I say, that I know not the cat to be dead or alive. It is clear I could be persuaded otherwise.”

“And where liest thine affections?”

“In a box of their own.” Horatio looks around. No one’s watching, they’re still in the corner. Fuck it. He’s probably never going to see this man again. If this happens, nothing much should come of it. “And there is but one way to discover a purring sweetheart or a rotting corpse.”

Hamlet’s now caught on. “Prithee, tell.”

Horatio looks him in the eyes and grins stupidly under his mask. “Open the box.”

Somewhere in the middle of the ballroom, Valentine and Mercutio recognize each other’s costumes and greet each other. Mercutio tries to leave, but Val calls him back.

“A word?” He asks.

“That’s two.”

He rolls his eyes. “Many words?”

“I shall cap you at fifty.”

“It is my understanding,” he starts choosing his words carefully, “there are many fine ladies of noble blood at this masque. Thine own blood makes you a most suitable bachelor. Should any of these women be to your liking, I will back thee, for I wish to see our uncle relieved that thou art wed—”

“Stop.”

“I had reached but forty-nine.”

“With the ache of a thousand. You mock me, brother.”

He’s confused, and clueless. Mostly clueless. “What?”

“I interest myself not in these women. The disregard of his words is for no reason other than I loathe marriage entirely. I interest myself not. Not in women at all.”

The music is loud. It’s drowning for them both. Valentine takes a step back from his brother, and Mercutio fills with fear.

“I hadn’t—”

“You had not.”

“With no women—”

“None.”

“With,” Valentine tries, “With men?”

“With one.” Mercutio tries to subtly look around. Benvolio disappeared as soon as they entered, and he thinks he’s avoiding him because of the tension during his speech earlier.

“With—” says Valentine, and something fires in his head. “O, God, o God!” He cries. “Thine friend B—”

Mercutio quickly puts a hand to his mouth. “Keep thy voice low!” He yells. A few people glance at them, but soon shake it off and continue dancing.

Valentine licks his hand, then, when that doesn’t work to get him off, puts a finger in his mouth and bites down.

“Ah!”

“I care not—” He struggles until Mercutio lets him go. “Mercutio, I care not. I wish only that I had known before.”

“Oh. Well.”

Valentine stands still. In truth, he’s had a feeling for a while: he doesn’t always feel correct in calling himself a man. Maybe, he thinks, he has a person to speak with about that later, even if his brother is insufferable.

“Wherefore dance you not with him?” He asks.

“He knows not of this fancy.”

“Tell him.” He insists. “‘Tis most unlike you to be a coward, the outspoken knave you are. I bet you won’t.”

Mercutio huffs. “I shall! I take delight in being an outspoken knave.”

Mission accomplished. “Then do so now, fool!” He pushes him excitedly away.

“This box of yours,” says Hamlet, who, not for the first time that night, feels a distinct sensation of melting into his shoes. “Have I the key?”

Horatio’s heart is beating out of his chest. “How forward of thee. Hath we not but just been acquainted?”

“Ay, but ‘tis rumored the Earth harbors souls who have for hundreds of years intimately known each other.”

“Ah,” Horatio taps his heel to the ground and peels himself off the wall. “And you believe we art of these souls, ay?” He motions Hamlet to follow, and starts towards the staircase. 

“I can see no evidence to the contrary!” Hamlet teases, and walks after him. “Whither art we going?”

He slows; he thinks he sees his cousin across the room, mask pulled up and talking to someone—scratch that, holding _hands_ with someone. He almost saves this information to bother him later before he notices that this someone is a man. For now, he watches them leave out the front door, and recollects himself, walking up the carpeted staircase. “Upstairs is a sitting-room, ‘t should be void of bodies. Mind you? I grow tired of the company these people give.”

There’s perhaps a reason for the pit growing in Hamlet’s stomach. It isn’t fear, or regret, but a growing realization that the fact this stranger knows his way around the house may be a bit suspicious.

But he tries not to think it. “I mind not,” he reassures, and lets the young man push aside a set of double doors. He doesn’t know what to do upon entering, what would seem too invasive. He keeps wondering, feeding his suspicion. Horatio asks him politely to close the door.

Having done so, he stays leaning his side against it, staring at the handle. Up until now he was fine being cheeky, even easing into the flirtation, but he didn’t expect to get this far. Now he hopes it won’t go much further, because if it does, and if this man gets too close, and notices the smoothness of his throat and the smallness of his figure and his poor attempt at hiding breasts, and if this man is a Capulet, and if he finds him to be a Montague, he must have a weapon stored somewhere around this vast house and he would logically be entirely unafraid to use it. If a fool and his enemy were to be placed in a sitting-room, how long until the fool is killed? If no one opens those double doors again, is he ever truly dead?

“Tell me honest,” Hamlet’s starting to shake. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t fear death, he’s told himself this a thousand times. “Art thee of this house?”

Horatio starts to sweat. “I am in it, am I not? Though, so art thee.”

“Play not with my heart. We talk of cats and boxes and life and death, though I know not where the venom fits. Should it be in me?” His voice is shaking. Shut up, shut up. “Prithee, art thee of the house of Capulet?”

He puts a hand to the edge of his mask as if to remove it before thinking better. “Ay. I must admit I am of Capulet blood. What gives this matter?”

Hamlet turns so his back is against the door. “Then,” he starts, and bites his tongue. The realization comes like this: he’s going to be killed soon anyway. If anyone were to take his life, he’d prefer it to be this man. “Then take me painlessly to hell, for I am a Montague.” He removes his mask with a quivering hand.

“Oh,” says Horatio eloquently, studying his face.

“Dost thou abhor to look upon me? It is no matter, do it swiftly. I see a blade across the way, or there is a down pillow to smother me with. Though shouldst thou put feathers in my lungs I may cough mine way to heaven, and we alike know mine roots to be infernal.” He feels all his weight against the door, and slides down it. His voice is getting higher. It burns a little.

“Nay, nay, this is not the grounds for mine silence and ineloquence.” Horatio crouches to meet his eye. “Thine extern is the cat, ay?”

“...Ay?”

“I think this feline to be alive and absolute. ‘Tis all.”

“Thou thinkst—” He blushes, and only grows more red when he realizes he doesn’t have a mask to hide this behind anymore.

“Dear stranger, one I hath known for but a night, one I hath known for a thousand years, I feel this feud matters not to us. I know mineself to be far less hot-blooded than mine cousin Tybalt, and should you tell me thy name in full, I should note it as a peaceful one. Let the matter of our blood tax thee not.”

“My name…?”

“Ay, in full, it does no good to keep to the last. What art we, if not our first? If not foremost that which we are called by friends and lovers?”

That would be a lot. “Might I propose—”

“Forward of thee.”

Hamlet gapes. He’s certain he’s smirking under that mask (he is). “Might I propose an exchange? A name for a visor.”

He hesitates. “Nay, I fear I am not so fine.”

“Fear thee? Do not!” He bites his lip. God, this is going to be embarrassing. “I needs admit I did glimpse you removing thy visor before, and wast already taken. I’the name of peace, showeth me thy visage once more?”

The lighting would be far worse, since no torches are lit in the sitting-room, all expended for the ballroom downstairs, with only the faint fire-light from below and the blue of the moon creeping in.

So Horatio dives. It can’t be that bad. He can’t be that bad. He pulls off his mask, careful not to let his cap slip and reveal a hidden nest of hair.

Hamlet’s chest tightens. It’s been doing that a lot lately, in fact. “I should not have asked, for mine blood, as I hath said, is infernal, and it burns with holy retribution to see the face of divinity.”

Horatio feels himself, in this moment, to be a whole list of things, among them: Big. Small. Beautiful. Ugly. Handsome. Seen. Brave. Cowardly. Intelligent. And most of all very, very stupid. Here he is, showing a feminine face to a perfect stranger, and endangering himself should it be clear this is the first night he went out as a man.

But Hamlet doesn’t seem to care. Well, the reality is, Hamlet doesn’t notice at all. If he were to notice, he wouldn’t care. Similarly, if Horatio were to notice, he wouldn’t care either. Funny how that mutually works out. Funny how they don’t have to notice to not care.

“Had we not a bargain? I should hope I hath not burned thy tongue with this mock divinity ere you bless me with thy name.”

“Nay, he speaks, this tongue, and may other pleasures perform quite nicely.” He clears his throat and speaks again. “Though ordinary as well. I am called Hamlet.”

“Hamlet.” He considers it, still dizzy from the innuendo, and now from the simple sound of the name. “Hamlet. A lovely name it is.”

“‘Twas not in the order, though perhaps an exception may be granted? Am I to know the name of the angel before me, or be cast in divine light sans a syllable to cling to?”

Of course, Horatio knows his name, but no one else does. He hasn’t told anyone, though he chose it carefully for a while. He calls himself it in his sleep, in his mirror, and silently in his wake, to build the association, to give himself some solace, but no one else addresses him by it.

“Horatio.” He says. “Call me Horatio.”

“Horatio.” He tries.

Maybe it’s the starvation of any affection that’s getting to him, but it hurts more than anything, and it hurts in a very good way. “Hamlet.” Horatio throws back.

“Horatio.”

“Hamlet.”

“Horatio,” he finishes, “Art thou of immediate Capulet blood? I cannot say, though mine knowledge is limited, I hath heard of such a godly creature in this house.”

“Alas, I am, son of the Lord and Lady Capulet.”

“It burns, it must be true. Wherefore hath I not heard of thee?”

“I am kept well.”

“Cat in a box.”

“With poison, ay.” He adds. He thinks of his mother’s coldness, and his father’s cluelessness, and his banishment from leaving the house.

Hamlet takes a deep breath. “Well, holy Horatio, best-guarded divine secret of the Capulets, mine thousand-year lover and mine recent pleasure, hear my prayer.” He takes one of Horatio’s hands in his own. “If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

Please, please, don’t run away, I don’t have long enough to wait for you, Hamlet’s mind is begging.

Fuck it, fuck it, throw caution to the wind, Horatio’s thinking.

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this: for saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.” Despite his coyness, Horatio leans closer, backing Hamlet further against the door.

“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”

“Ay, pilgrim,” he tilts his head, “lips that they must use in prayer.”

“O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.” He says, then whispers: “They pray: grant thee, lest faith turn to despair.”

They’re close now, far past the point of closeness which would raise suspicion were anyone else around. Horatio puts his spare hand on Hamlet’s cheek. “Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.”

“Then,” caution to the wind, caution out of the atmosphere, “move not while my prayer’s effect I take.”

And he kisses him. And Horatio kisses back. 

“Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.” Hamlet says softly when they pull away.

Maybe he’s starved for affection, but Horatio finds himself wanting more. “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”

“Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.”

Horatio kisses him this time, uneasily at first. They lean into it.

He pulls away and presses his forehead to his. “You kiss by th’ book,” says Horatio.

A voice sounds from outside. It’s the nurse, calling a name that scratches Horatio’s ears; his mother must actually be looking for him. He falls backwards and fumbles for his mask.

“I must go.”

“Wherefore?”

“It pains me, but I cannot explain ‘t. The whole ordeal is beyond anything.”

Panicked, and far sadder than he feels he should be, Horatio struggles to put his mask back on and runs out through the other door.

Hamlet closes it behind him, as when he entered. The room is unlit by torches, and touched only by the light from below and the cold glow of the moon. He lets out a shaky breath.

Well. At least he has a story to tell Benvolio before he’s killed.


	2. Denmark, Act One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> romeo is like: {secret wlw giggling}

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by the way yes the whole denmark part is in this fic instead of me making a series or something because >:3 im chaotic and i want people to read it. Read It Im A Genius.  
> s/o to andy [(his tungle)](https://damienhirstsdiamondskull.tumblr.com/) for betaing this after my dumb mistakes in the first chapter we love a KING who fixes my fakespearean  
> [wipes tears] i just....i just love trans girl romeo so muhc
> 
> these are all taking place in their generally intended eras, so im pinning verona down around 15th century renaissance and denmark 14th century late middle ages. theoretically if i wanted to go stupid go crazy i could set them at the same time good ol william never sets dates so anything is fair game, but i feel like they shouldnt be! im not gonna talk incessantly in the notes but its fun this way to cut back to even more queer shenanigans a century earlier.

Around a century earlier, the same moon turns its large face onto the northern side of Europe, the same moon that, in its older days, will pull the tides of hearts in Verona, now (as we rewind the years) sits on the coast bathing the air in blue. Instead of lighting partygoers ablaze, it now chills the bones of the night watchmen of the castle of Elsinore. Though, maybe this is hardly the fault of the moon after all.

Barnardo, one of these men, stands at the ready, arms shaking. He hears something move behind him, and turns around, weapon drawn. “Who’s there?”

“Nay,” a voice says, “answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.”

He walks further forward. “Long live the king!”

“Barnardo?” The figure steps into the light, and Barnardo recognizes it as his coworker and friend Francisco. He visibly relaxes.

“He.”

“You come most carefully upon your hour.”

He looks up at the moon to catch the time, though he checked it only a few minutes before, and it’s barely further in the sky. As if on cue, though, he faintly hears a church bell to call for midnight prayer. “‘Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.”

Francisco tries desperately to pull his sleeves further down, and exhales, leaving a cloud in front of him. “For this relief much thanks: ‘tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.”

“Have you had quiet guard?”

“Not a mouse stirring.”

“Well, good night.” He says, and calls him back. “If you do meet Iphis and Marcellus, the rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.”

Francisco nods, and there’s some more rustling, to which both of them jump.

“I think I hear them,” or at least, Barnardo hopes it’s them, “Stand ho! Who is there?”

The one Barnado refers to as Iphis is, in fact, not named Iphis at all, nor is she the gender she presents as. In truth, she had been so determined to go to a university, which she was barred from on the grounds of being a woman, that she has thus far spent her entire education under this identity. Her name is Juliet, and now she’s come to like the feel of men’s clothing and finds she wishes to regularly wear it anyway. And, should word get back to Wittenberg of her crossdressing, she would be kicked from the school, so it’s best to play it safe.

Also, she’s quite smart, and likes her intelligence being paid attention to when she’s Iphis. It doesn’t get noticed often when she’s Juliet. She likes Juliet, she likes being Juliet, but it’s all very complicated, and she likes power most of all.

“Friends to this ground.” Iphis/Juliet calls. For the sake of consistency, she will be called Juliet; you know her, and she knows herself, as Juliet.

“And liegemen to the Dane.” Marcellus adds from behind her.

Francisco visibly relaxes, and pats Barnardo on the shoulder, to which he jumps at. He’s still a little frazzled. “Give you good night.”

“O farewell, honest soldier. Who hath relieved you?” Marcellus asks.

“Barnardo hath my place. Give you good night.”

With that, Francisco leaves, shivering and yawning still. 

“Say, what, is Iphis there?” Barnardo calls.

“A piece of him,” comes the response.

“Welcome, Iphis,” and as his eyes clear and he identifies the other, “and good Marcellus.”

The two draw toward Barnardo and huddle to protect themselves from the bitter wind. They’re there for a reason, though they all wish it were under better weather.

Marcellus has a habit of talking softly, but the question he asks comes out with the fear and disbelief of a little boy: “What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?”

Barnardo checks over his shoulder, as if something will jump out, then turns back to the two and shakes his head. “I have seen nothing.”

“Iphis says ‘tis but our fantasy, and will not let belief take hold of him touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.” They both turn to Juliet, who crosses her arms. “Therefore I have entreated him along with us to watch the minutes of this night, that, if again this apparition come, he may approve our eyes and speak to it.”

Yes, that part. Juliet loves the fact that she found a way to get to school. She didn’t expect her knowledge of Latin to be the deciding factor in tangling her up in ghost stories. “Tush, tush. ‘Twill not appear.”

“Sit down awhile,” Barnardo beckons them to a small bench beside the fence, “and let us once again assail your ears that are so fortified against out story, what we have two nights seen.”

Marcellus gently pushes her along. “Well, sit we down, and let us hear Barnardo speak of this.”

It’s not that Juliet doesn’t believe in ghosts. It’s not even that she doesn’t suspect probable cause for this specific ghost to appear. It’s just that everything would be so much easier if this weren’t real, so she doesn’t want it to be.

He clears his throat and rolls his shoulders. “Last night of all, when yond same star that’s westward from the pole had made his course t’ illume that part of heaven where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, the bell then beating one—”

Marcellus, seeing something behind him, waves his hands for him to stop.

“What? Saw we—”

He leans over and presses both palms to his mouth to shut him up, backing him against the edge of the bench and trapping Juliet in between. “Peace, break thee off!” He stage whispers. “Look, look where it comes again.”

Slowly, the other two follow his gaze. A faint apparition catches their eye. Marcellus removes his hands and leans back, as far away from the ghost as he can get.

“In the same figure like the King that’s dead,” Barnardo points out, as if that weren’t already obvious. Even from afar, the crown, armor, and posture is more than enough to indicate its identity.

“Thou art a scholar,” says Marcellus, “Speak to it, Iphis.”

“Looks he not like the King? Mark it, Iphis.”

Juliet stands up like a fawn, unsure her feet will hold her. “Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.”

The ghost seems to catch her eye; well, really, its eyes are blank, but it looks in her general direction.

“It would be spoke to.” Barnardo guesses.

“Speak to it, Iphis.”

“ _What_ ,” she starts, in uneasy Latin, and takes a few shaky steps forward, “ _What, art thou that usurp’st this time of night, together with that fair and warlike form in which the majesty of buried Denmark did sometimes march?_ ” The ghost does not respond. _“By heaven, I charge thee, speak._

“It is offended,” Marcellus says simply as the ghost walks away, into the woods.

“See, it stalks away!” Barnardo laments.

Juliet starts to chase it, but no matter how fast she runs, it is faster. “ _Stay, speak!_ ” She cries. “ _Speak! I charge thee, speak!_ ”

When the other two find her, the ghost is gone.

“How now, Iphis,” Marcellus worries, “you tremble and look pale. Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on ‘t?”

Well. This is turning out a lot more of a hassle than she intended. “Before my God, I might not this believe without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes.”

“Is it not like the King?” He asks.

“Ask thou art to thyself.” She confirms with finality. “Such was the very armor he had on when he the ambitious Norway combated. So frowned he once when, in an angry parle, he smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. ‘Tis strange.”

“Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, with martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.”

She pulls her cloak closer around herself. “In what particular thought to work I know not, but in the gross and scope of mine opinion this bodes some strange eruption to our state.”

It’s still quite late, or perhaps it’s early. Either way, none of the three are getting a solid night’s sleep. They wouldn’t even if they were able to be tucked safely away in bed right now; the sighting left them shaken. 

“Good now, sit down,” Marcellus leads them all back to the bench, each hand guiding a shoulder, “and tell me, he that knows, why this same strict and most observant watch so nightly toils the subject of the land, and why such daily cast of brazen cannon and foreign mark for implements of war, why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task does not divide the Sunday from the week. What might be toward that this sweaty haste doth make the night joint laborer with the day? Who is ‘t that can inform me?” He glances at Juliet.

“That can I.” Now sitting, she draws her knees to her chest and rests her heels on the bench. This is the other reason she chooses to dress as a man: the political knowledge. Truly, if she weren’t, she never would have seen the King to be able to recognize him. “At least the whisper goes so: our last king, whose image even but now appeared to us, was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride, dared to the combat; in which our valiant King did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact, well ratified by law and heraldry, did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands which he stood seized of, to the conquerer.”

“Against the which,” she rubs her hands together to warm herself, “a moiety competent was gaged by our kind, which had returned to the inheritance of Fortinbras, had he been vanquisher, as, by the same comart and carriage of the article designed, his fell to our King. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, of unimproved mettle hot and full, hath in the skirts of Norway here and there sharked up a list of lawless resolutes for food and diet to some enterprise that hath a stomach in ‘t; which is no other (as it doth well appear unto our state) but to recover of us, by strong hand and terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands so by his father lost. And this, I take it, is the main motive of our preparations, the source of this our watch, and the chief head of this posthaste and rummage in the land.”

Well, for most of them, anyway. In truth, when Romeo left Wittenberg in a storm of fury, Juliet followed, overcome with a sense of responsibility to mollify her.

“I think it be no other but e’en so,” Barnardo says, judging for all. “Well may it sort that this portentous figure comes armed through our watch so like the kind that was and is the question of these wars.”

She can’t help but think back to her studies. “A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome, a little ere the mightiest Julius fell, the graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; as stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, disasters in the sun; and the moist star, upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands, was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. And even the like precurse of feared events, as harbingers preceding still the fates and prologue to the omen coming on, have heaven and Earth together demonstrated unto our climatures and countrymen.”

She pauses, and focuses on a growing fuzzy light. It is the form of the ghost, appearing again, seeming to stress itself to motion to the mortal world. “But soft, behold! Lo, where it comes again!” She gets up, though Marcellus tries to hold her back. “I’ll cross it though it blast me. Stay, illusion!”

The ghost spreads its arms.

“If thou hast any sound or use of voice, speak to me! If there be any good thing to be done that may to thee do ease and grace to me, speak to me! If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, which happily foreknowing may avoid, o, speak!”

It is silent.

“Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life, extorted treasure in the womb of earth, for which, they say, you spirits walk in death, speak of it.”

The cock crows, and the sky has turned a dim lavender. The ghost starts to fade, and Juliet is tired, but not for having stayed up all night.

“Stay and speak!” She cries, and turns back to the two, “Stop it, Marcellus!”

“Shall I strike it with my partisan?” He asks.

“Do, if it will not stand!”

The ghost turns away and starts off again—this time, all three chase it, Marcellus being behind, his weapon drawn. Barnardo and Juliet both try to aid as it dodges them, with cries of “‘Tis here!”

Then, in the blink of an eye, it blends in fine dust into the dawn.

“‘Tis gone.” Marcellus laments, then hits himself on the head. “We do it wrong, being so majestical, to offer it the show of violence! For it is as the air, invulnerable, and our vain blows malicious mockery.”

“It was about to speak when the cock crew.” Barnardo realizes.

“And then it started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons.” Juliet nods, slightly less on edge, warming the smallest bit in the faint sun. “I have heard the cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat awake the god of day, and at his warning, whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, th’ extravagant and erring spirit hies to his confine, and of the truth herein this present object made probation.”

Marcellus relaxes. “It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated, this bird of dawning singeth all night long; and then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, the nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, no fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, so hallowed and so gracious is that time.”

“So have I heard,” she comments, “and do part believe it. But look, the morn in russet mantle clad walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill. Break we our watch up, and by my advice let us impart what we have seen tonight unto young Romeo; for, upon my life, this spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.”

Ah, the matter of that small “him.” There’s a large problem there; this “him” is not a “him” at all, in fact, the entire kingdom of Denmark has no idea their beloved “Prince” is actually a Princess. Juliet, for her part, despite their friendship back at Wittenberg, has not picked up on this. The Princess, for her part, has not picked up on her being Juliet. To her, she is Iphis, and to Juliet, she is Romeo, the Prince of Denmark. They are both wrong, but not in the same way. That is, Juliet is in some way content (though not entirely) being Juliet, and was born as Juliet. Romeo is understood as the Prince, though knows herself to be the Princess. We’ve dealt with this before. But no one really knows about Romeo, not yet, not the way she wants to be known. Neither know each other the way they know themselves.

There’s also the small matter of Juliet’s large crush on the Princess, but that’s a matter to be regarded later.

“Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it as needful in our loves, fitting our duty?” Juliet asks.

Marcellus bites his lip. It’s only a matter of waiting until after today’s ceremony. “Let’s do ‘t, I pray, and I this morning know where we shall find him most convenient.”

\---

It’s a brilliant coronation, as all royal ceremonies tend to be, and is brilliantly impersonal, as all royal ceremonies tend to be. The whole hall is decked out in beautiful white flowers, the people all backs straight and shining, overbearing as the sun on a hot day. Romeo remains a cover of darkness, watching the close of the ceremony in all black. The attendees all lean away from her, feeling the air around her hot; she is pissed, and creates a storm cloud around her humid with envy.

Her uncle Claudius adjusts his crown; it is lopsided, and continues to be so. “Thought yet of our death brother’s death the memory be green,” he starts, avoiding Romeo, green in her own way, “and that it us befitted to bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe, yet so far hath discretion fought with nature that we with wisest sorrow think on him together with remembrance of ourselves.”

Romeo rolls her eyes. Claudius turns to his new wife, her mother, Gertrude. “Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state, have we (as ‘twere with a defeated joy, with an auspicious and a dropping eye, with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, in equal scale weighing delight and dole) taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred your better wisdoms, which have freely gone with this affair along. For all, our thanks.”

Romeo laughs loudly. Some noble stares at her, offended. Claudius sighs, and continues.

“Now follows that you know. Young Fortinbras, holding a weak supposal of our worth or thinking by our late dear brother’s death our state to be disjoint and out of frame, colleagued with this dream of his advantage, he hath not failed to pester us with message importing the surrender of those lands lost by his father, with all bonds of law, to our most valiant brother—so much for him!” He waves his hand, the other on Gertrude’s back. “Now for ourself and for this time of meeting. Thus much the business is: we have here writ to Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears of this his nephew’s purpose, to suppress his further gait herein, in that the levies, the lists, and full proportions are all made out of his subject; and we here dispatch you, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand, for bearers of this greeting to old Norway, giving to you no further personal power to business with the King more than the scope of these dilated articles allow.”

If you asked Romeo, she’d say to speak with Fortinbras directly instead of going behind his back to his uncle like that. Though, maybe enraged minds have a sort of innate understanding with each other. She doesn’t fear this Fortinbras all that much.

In any case, Claudius hands the messengers a paper with the air of utmost urgency. “Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.”

They bow, and Cornelius replies: “In that and all things will we show our duty.”

“We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.”

The two leave, nearly tripping over each other.

“And now,” Claudius turns to a young man standing next to his sister and father, “Laertes, what’s the news with you? You told us of some suit. What is ‘t, Laertes? You cannot speak of reason to the Dane and lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes, that shall not be my offer, not thy asking? The head is not more native to the heart, the hand more instrumental to the mouth, than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. What wouldst thou have, Laertes?”

The young man furrows his brows, glancing up at his sister, and back to the King in confusion. Then, he seems to realize the misunderstanding, and takes a step back. “My dread lord, ‘tis not me that desires much from thou, but my sister that wishes your leave and favor to return to France, from whence though willingly we came to Denmark to show our duty in your coronation.”

His sister, Ophelia, finally gives a wave and calls attention to herself. “Now I must confess, that duty done, my thoughts and wishes bend again toward France, and bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.”

(Clear across the room, Romeo’s eyes bore into the back of Claudius’ skull.)

Claudius does not make eye contact with her as he did Laertes. Both the siblings find their anger rising. “Have you your father’s leave? What says Polonius?”

Polonius scoffs. “Hath not, my lord, wrung from me any such leave, though by laborsome petition she attempts. I do beseech you give her no leave to go.”

He nods. “Were your brother to go with I would accept. Though sans protection, I cannot give leave.”

(Romeo steps back, and twirls around, mocking a knife to her throat. She picks up a random goblet off a nearby table and drains what was left within.)

Claudius turns before Ophelia and Laertes can argue. “But now, my cousin Romeo and my son—”

“A little more than kin and less than kind!” Romeo shrieks, staggering finally to face her uncle. The room quiets. She lets out a high-pitched laugh and holds up her empty goblet high, as if to toast.

“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” Claudius says frigidly.

“Not so, my lord,” She bows, “I am too much in the sun.”

“O, Good Romeo,” Gertrude calls to her daughter, “cast thy nighted color off, and let thine eye look like a friend to Denmark. Do not forever with thy vailed lids seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou know’st ‘tis common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.”

She stares blankly. “Ay, madam, it is common. Though more common, I suppose, for mothers to not know in proper their child’s plight.”

“Why, my plighted child, what aches thee?”

She bends forward and lets out a breathy laugh. “O, know you not?!” It’s a scene. She’s delighting in it. Ophelia and Laertes look on in poorly masked pride.

Romeo, in one swift movement, turns and launches her goblet at Claudius with as much force as she can. He yelps, and hardly dodges it. It hits Polonius on the shoulder with a clean _thunk._ No one but Polonius really cares about this.

“Madman!” Claudius cries.

“O, madman, madman, _madman!_ Catch the fool in a looking-glass! Gaze his twisted form in a spoon!” She’s reached the point of screaming very quickly. “Stare in a window at night and see the beast for what he is, ‘tis you, ‘tis you, ‘tis you who usurps the throne, the mosquito who sucks the blood from the rightful heir, the ill-laid crown on a head of warm air!”

In her blind fury, she climbs up on the long table, and makes her way to the other side of the room where Claudius stands in shock, kicking flower vases and plates set out on her way.

Nearing him, she jumps down and pulls him close by the collar. “You wish me to return to my studies,” she whispers, “to act the diligent Prince and shut my better part out, this blackness within that writhes with rage, ay? I know thee. I shall go not to Wittenberg. I shall go not to a cage you set for me.”

She releases him, and a couple servants rush to his side to fix his clothes.

“Madam, come.” Claudius doesn’t look away from Romeo. “This hostile and bitter accord of our son—”

“ _I am not your son!_ ” She screams.

He backs away. “It sits ill in my heart, madam, let’s away. The great cannon to the clouds shall tell, and the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again, respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.”

Trumpets sound, and one by one the attendees of the coronation file out. Ophelia lays a comforting hand on her shoulder before she is pulled along by her father. And Romeo is left, a dark spot in a white room, panting, eyes seeing red.

She’s always been quick to act, and perhaps that’s a weakness. But for this moment, she held herself back, just for a second. Her rapier burns within its sheath. She runs a shaking hand through her hair, and stares into space.

A less decisive person, here, would take the opportunity of a wide empty room to soliloquize. But Romeo knows what she is thinking and in her mind has no audience to perform for, no secret to tell. It is out. It is out.

She is angry, to be vague. To be specific, she is pissed off. The whole reason she is not understood as the Princess of Denmark, or the Disgraced Princess of Denmark, or referred to with the proper pronouns and honorifics, is because she wished to some day wear that crown atop her head. Now, her potential power is stripped, and for what reason? That she was off bettering her mind? God forbid she be out of town!

Last she checked, that’s not how any of this is supposed to work. It’s all a plan, she’s been set up! She remains unmarried, is that the problem? It’s about the status. It’s about looking onto the throne of Denmark and seeing King and Queen…though, for her, she’d want it to be different.

Queen and Queen.

Queen and Princess?

It’d be easier to figure out these naming conventions were she out to anyone but herself. Her rapier still burns. Something dawns on her, and she may have skipped about five logical steps to get there, but the quick-firing of her brain doesn’t notice and sticks onto one thought, one thought that seems suddenly looming in importance over all others.

“I must be wed!” Romeo says to an empty room.

She thinks back to Ophelia.

As she considers this revelation, the door opens uneasily, and Juliet, Marcellus and Barnardo file in, familiar figures to the Princess.

“Hail to your Lordship.” Juliet greets.

“I am glad to see you well!” Romeo cries, and gives her a running hug, spinning her around. “Iphis—or I do forget myself!”

She laughs. “The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.”

“Sir, my good friend, I’ll change that name with you.” She backs away to get a good look at her, both hands resting on her shoulders. “And what make you from Wittenberg, Iphis?”

There’s a cough from behind them.

“Marcellus?” She acknowledges.

“My good lord.”

“I am very glad to see you.” She turns to Barnardo. “Good even, sir.” She says out of obligation, and turns back to Juliet. “But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?”

“A truant disposition, good my lord.” She jokes.

“I would not hear your enemy say so! Nor shall you do my ear that violence to make it truster of your own report against yourself. I know you are no truant.”

 _Oh, if only you knew,_ Juliet thinks.

“But what is your affair in Elsinore? We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.” She finishes.

What could she say that isn’t as revealing as the truth? “My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.”

She backs away. “Not me? I prithee, do not mock me, fellow student.”

Juliet sighs. They can drop this act of strangers now, she decides. “‘Twas perhaps your father’s funeral, or your mother’s wedding, as it followed hard upon. ‘Tis rumored the funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”

“Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven or ever I had seen that day, Iphis!”

“Which day?” She asks.

“Either, neither. I do feel my head sorrowful empty.”

“Why, there gives not much of a change, then.”

Romeo glares at her. “Prithee, tell me what brings you to Elsinore.”

She takes in a deep breath. “I did see your father once. He was a goodly king.”

“He was a man,” she says with distaste, “take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

“My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.”

She pauses. “Saw who?”

“My lord, the King your father.”

“The King my father?”

She tells of Marcellus’ and Barnardo’s observation, of the sleepless night the three had, of the ghost sighting and its disappearance at the crowing of the cock.

“‘Tis very strange.” Romeo comments when she finishes.

“As I do live, my honored lord, ‘tis true. And we did think it writ down in our duty to let you know of it.”

She sighs. She isn’t really prepared to deal with her dad again, but alright. “Indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. Hold you the watch tonight?”

“We do, my lord.” Barnardo says.

She pauses, pacing a small part of the room, preparing a small list of questions. “Armed, say you?”

Juliet seems to understand she’s asking about the ghost. “Armed, my lord.” She says.

“From top to toe?”

“My lord, from head to foot.”

“Then saw you not his face?”

“O, yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.”

At this, she turns and tilts her head at Juliet. “What, looked he frowningly?”

She furrows her brows. “A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.”

“Pale or red?”

“Nay, very pale.”

She walks closer to her to look her in the eyes. “And fixed his eyes upon you?”

“Most constantly.” She breathes out.

Romeo makes a small hum in the back of her throat and steps back, thinking. This is not something she does thoroughly very often, so it’s a great sight to see. “I would I had been there.”

“It would have much amazed you.”

“Very like. Stayed it long?”

“While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.”

Behind her, Marcellus and Barnardo wave their arms. “Longer!” Barnardo contests.

“Not when _I_ saw it,” Juliet admits. “I speak the truth, my lord.”

“Ay, have I said you do not?” She shakes her head. “This ghost. Does it trouble thee?”

She squints at her. “I am scarce troubled by much, my lord.”

“Ay, ever the brave lad,” she laughs, which cuts them both, “to whom I am much unlike. Tell me honest, in your heart of hearts, does it trouble thee?”

Juliet considers what would be an appropriate response to this. Truly, she wasn’t that scared, but it was about the _implication._ It’s about the idea that there was something suspicious about the late king’s death. It’s about the idea that she can’t just call it quits, having checked in on Romeo, and head back to school without ever thinking about Elsinore again. In that sense, it terrifies her. “In the sense the kingdom cannot rest, ay, my lord, it troubles me greatly.”

Romeo, for her part, doesn’t care much about her father, and never did; as far as rich parents go, he was as impersonal as any. She’s more concerned for the safety and sanity of those she cares about, and if this spirit has been scaring everyone because it has something to say to _her_ …. Well, that’s just not cool; her style’s more impulsive than that. No point in waiting. If she were a ghost, she’d just yell until someone gives her what she wants. That’s a lot more effective than just appearing and running away with no given reason behind it.

“I will watch tonight.” She decides. “Perchance ‘twill walk again.”

“I warrant it will.” Juliet tries not to pick at her hands too hard. “I doubt some foul play.” She mutters.

“What say you?”

“Nothing, my lord.”

Romeo sighs. “I am your peer. Demean yourself not with this honorific.” She awaits a response that doesn’t come. “Another matter, another time. Regarding this apparition: Upon the platform, ‘twixt eleven and twelve, I’ll visit you.”

They all bow in agreement. “Our duty to your Honor,” they recite, in sync.

“Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.” She says absentmindedly. It’s going to be a long night.

\---

Walking through her carefully tended gardens with her brother, Ophelia lets out a heavy sigh. She had, of course, expected to be denied a leave, but she then expected to run away when she was denied, but her father quickly announced that she was to be placed under constant watch. Apparently having caught on that Laertes doesn’t count as “constant watch” because he pretty much lets his sister do whatever she wants, this means she’s trailed at a respectable distance by a couple of guardsmen.

“Heard you not what he hath said?” She asks, “If you were to come, I would be free to go. Had you any love for France?”

“Ay, i’ faith, I hath, though I must admit I am on occasion needed around the castle.” This pains Laertes, truly. He thinks back to all the subtle glances with men in parlors, not being able to act on them since his father was around. It would be freeing, honestly, to travel somewhere without Polonius’ presence.

“And I am not?” She gestures to her garden all around them, and looks back to ensure the guards following are out of earshot. “Do not dance around this. I know thine tendencies.” When Laertes sputters at this, she adds: “Oh, worry not, for mine are similar, though not exclusive. You and the heavens alike know this.”

“It is blunt of you to say.”

“I take great pleasure in it.” She beams, and Laertes understands suddenly why she would want to be somewhere else. Though he cannot fully comprehend the restricting nature of womanhood she faces, she stands in her garden like a bee looking for a flower she won’t find here. It could be Denmark, he thinks, but the reality is simply this: in a world that seeks to suffocate, the oxygen would be drained from the air wherever she turns. If they were to go to France, he would be there as her “protector,” and looked up to as such, while she would be the beautiful damsel fluttering about. They would meet people and look at art and speak with writers, but still, _still_ she would be linked to a home consisting of a man who sees her only as a frail young girl and a castle full of strangers.

He doesn’t look at her with pity, but with a blooming acknowledgement for the weight she carries on her shoulders. Still. He can’t just leave here. He loves his sister, enough to ally with her to push off suitors, enough to listen to her enthuse about her interests when Polonius doesn’t care (which is always). But Denmark is slowly becoming more chaotic, with the Princess screaming and throwing goblets, and everyone worrying for the validity of the throne, though they dare not speak it. Something is unfolding very quickly and slowly all at once, and he’d hate to be out of town when the walls come crumbling down.

“I find it amusing you know where my affections lie, as do I, for thee,” he says, finally. “I wish greatly, I do, to travel, to walk the streets of quaint little cities with my dearest sister, drunk and laughing, to feel the warmth of another sans worry for the front of our father, though I doubt my luck in that affair. Something to me calls for a rest, though I know not the meaning of the word, it calls that I should stand quaking in anticipation for the coming days.”

“At the least, consider my appeal.”

“I shall think on ’t, ay.” He concedes. “Regarding _thine_ affections…”

She catches on and plays embarrassment. “Mock me not.”

“I mock thee not, though I must warn. For Romeo, and the trifling of his favor, hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, a violet in the youth of primy nature, forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, the perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more.”

Ophelia glares at him. “No more but so?”

Laertes sighs. “Think it no more. I worry only for thine heart. For nature, crescent, does not grow alone in thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes, the inward service of the mind and soul grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now, and now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch the virtue of his will; but you must fear, his greatness weighed, his will is not his own, for he himself,” he pauses, “he himself is subject to his birth.”

Neither speak, as the last line sinks in. Ophelia bends down to finger the petals of a forget-me-not, averting her eye from her brother.

He continues. “He may not as unvalued persons do, carve for himself, for on his choice depends the safety and the health of this whole state. And therefore must his choice be circumscribed unto the voice and yielding of that body whereof he is the head. Then, if he says he loves you, it fits your wisdom so far to believe it as he in his particular act and place may give his saying deed, which is no further than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.”

“And if he were rightfully the main voice of Denmark?” She asks.

“He is not.”

“For the time.” Ophelia stands back up. “Cease this chatter and calm your fear. Thou talk’st of a subject I knoweth well.” At his look of confusion, she explains. “I wish not to marry him and have as of late been pondering the outcome of abandoning this affair. He is, in many ways, overwhelming, all-consuming, a romance which is not for the likes of me. I keep mineself in the eye of my affection, no fruit may challenge that. And, good my brother, do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads and recks not his own rede.”

He rolls his eyes. “O, fear me not.”

Back in their part of the castle, the guards do not enter but stand in front of the door, since Polonius is inside and there is no need for them. Ophelia hands her father a small bouquet of hand-picked butterfly weeds with an emotionless face.

“I should be going once more, I am requested of the King.” Laertes says, which creates an odd feeling on his tongue. He’s not sure he likes it, and his family looks confused as well. “Well. I am off. Remember well, Ophelia, what we in the garden discussed, and I pray you speak the honest truth.”

“Farewell, but, oh, my son, come here—” Polonius calls him over, and gives him some long-winded advice on the treatment of the king that neither Laertes nor his sister process. They’ve learned to filter out his speeches by now, and have gotten very good at catching the gist of it.

When Laertes leaves, Polonius turns, now largely uninterested in his other child. “My daughter, what lovely flowers with your delicate hand hath you brought, hath we a vase to carry them?”

She tries not to laugh at his ignorance. “I may request for one.”

“What is ‘t, Ophelia, Laertes hath said to you?”

She puts a hand to the back of her neck. “So please you, something touching the Lord Romeo.”

His eyes widen; the process of a lecture is far more interesting to him than anything in his daughter’s life, really, and he’d been meaning to broach the subject as well. “Marry, well bethought. ‘Tis told me he hath very oft of late given private time to you, and you yourself have of your audience been most free and bounteous.”

She rolls her eyes.

“If it be so, as so ‘tis put on me, and in that way of caution, I must tell you you do not understand yourself so clearly as it behooves my daughter and your honor. What is between you? Give me up the truth.”

She rolls her tongue in her mouth and pops her lips. “He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection to me.”

“Affection, puh!” He shakes his head. “You speak like a green girl unsifted in such perilous circumstance. Do you believe his ‘tenders,’ as you call them?”

She tries not to clench her fists too tightly. “I was going to—”

“Do you believe them?”

Her nails dig into her palms. “I do not know, my lord, what I should think.”

“Marry, I will teach you. Think yourself a baby,” her face scrunches in disdain, “that you have ta’en these tenders for true pay, which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly, or you’ll tender me a fool.”

“My lord. He hath importuned me with love in honorable fashion—”

“Ay, _fashion_ you may call it!”

“—and hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, with almost all the holy vows of heaven!” She scoffs.

He mocks her. “Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know, when the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter, giving more light than heat, extinct in both even in their promise as it is a-making, you must not take for fire. From this time be something scanter of your maiden presence.”

She hates it. She hates this. She hates how this has turned into a lecture about her sex life.

“Set your entreatments at a higher rate than a command to parle. For Lord Romeo, believe so much in him that he is young, and with a larger tether may he walk than may be given you. In few, Ophelia, do not believe his vows, for they are brokers, not of that dye which their investments show, but mere implorators of unholy suits, breathing like sanctified and pious bawds the better to beguile.”

She doesn’t bring up that he couldn’t be more wrong about Romeo, honestly. The Princess is one of the most faithful and loyal lovers, but also one of the most obsessive. Some of the reason she’s planning to break up with her is because she doesn’t have the energy to teach her healthy relationship dynamics.

“This is for all: I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth have you so slander any moment leisure as to give words or talk with the Lord Romeo. Look to ‘t, I charge you. Come your ways.”

She wishes Laertes were around, and, when she catches herself wishing this, wishes she had the courage to not wish such a thing and argue with her father herself, grab his neck and hiss curses into his ear and run far, far away from him. Instead, she nods, trying to swallow her rage. “I shall obey, my lord.” She says, only because her plan went along with Polonius’ in the first place and, frankly, she isn’t in the mood to hear another speech.

\---

Claudius is a mess, that much is clear to anyone in the kingdom of Denmark. As a king and as a human alike, he gives the air of not knowing at all what he is doing while somehow knowing exactly what he’s doing and how it hurts people all at once. He is calculated in his chaos. He’s also just sick of Romeo’s whining and wants to get horribly drunk tonight in peace.

“For what, my lordship, hath you requested my presence?” Laertes bows and asks.

“I am in need less for thine presence, young Laertes, more for thine assistance.” Claudius says, which: ouch.

“Of course. And how might I assist?”

“‘Tis clear you are more alike in age than your father and I to my...son.” He grimaces at the word _son_ (though not for the same reason I, your humble narrator, am grimacing, that is, the word itself being an accidental misgendering of the girl. He grimaces at the word because in his heart of hearts he hates thinking of Romeo as his child, in all her screaming, wild ways, and in all her fits of jealous rage).

“Ay, he is but my elder only of two years.”

“Therefore, this gives you the advantage of having a sort of boylike relation to him, though you may not comprehend his latest vindictive spirit, clear it is in my age I am ill-equipped to glean what afflicts the young Prince—I suspect by the fashion of his tantrums it relates to my seat upon the throne.”

Laertes stares in puzzlement. Clearly, yes, he thought that was quite obvious.

“My point,” He continues, “is to encourage thee to pall him in brotherly friendship, and twist his eye so he may perpend me rightful ruler,” he pauses, in what may be self-consciousness, “as I am. Loosen the laces of his madness, and, in turn, as a belt holds one’s attire altogether cinch his trust. Though he be o’ercome with the iron taste of rebellion, close his lip so no blood may enter, and wash him of this abhorrence, leave the Prince to dry in a gale. Good Laertes, whose father is mine most trusting and loving counselor, can I have your word you shall to the best of thine ability cart this wild horse back to his stable?”

Laertes translates this clearly: he’s being told to manipulate the Princess. This can’t be done that easily. Moreover, he’s mildly upset he’s being asked this and not his sister, who would have a much larger chance of success. The reason why he’s standing before the King instead of her, of course, is obvious: Claudius is that much of a close-minded idiot that he doesn’t realize who’s useful and who isn’t.

“To the best of mine ability, I shall gauge and reform his transgressions, my lord.”

He seems to be satisfied. “Ay, though best is not the ideal. This standing, more precise shall I posture it: succeed.”

Laertes nods, and feels a knot in his stomach. Maybe he really should have just gone to France with Ophelia.

\---

It’s night, but no one in the castle is sleeping soundly. Laertes sits on the edge of his bed staring at the wall; Ophelia finds herself with a bout of insomnia, tossing and turning from side to side; Polonius starts to wonder with his two remaining neurons what a butterfly weed really means; Claudius is up and on his way to getting blackout drunk; Gertrude has tried to retire to her chambers but remains irritated by the noise; and two guardsmen, a university student masquerading as a man, and a Princess masquerading as a Prince feel the fog roll in and the wind howl as they await a ghost.

Romeo shivers under her already heavy layers. “The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.”

Juliet sighs and pulls her cloak off to drape over her.

“Thank you,” she mutters, “What hour now?”

“I think it lacks of twelve.”

“No,” Marcellus says from in front of them, “it is struck.”

“Indeed? I heard it not.” She lowers her voice. “It then draws near the season wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.”

Behind them, faint trumpets are heard.

“What does this mean, my lord?” Juliet wonders.

Romeo sighs. “The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse, keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring upspring reels; and, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, the kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out the triumph of his pledge.”

She finds herself disgusted. “What, is it a custom?”

“Ay, marry, is ‘t.”

“Well,” she says, “to my mind, and though I am not native here and to the manner not born, it is a custom more honored in the breach than the observance. This heavy-headed revel east and west makes this land traduced and taxed of other nations. Indeed, it takes from your achievements, though performed at height, the pith and marrow of thine attribute. So oft it chances in particular men that for some vicious mole of nature in them, as in their birth—where they are not guilty, since nature cannot choose its origin—by the o’ergrowth of some complexion, or by some habit that too much o-erkeavens the form of plausive manners—that these men, carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, being nature’s livery or fortune’s star, his virtues else, be they as pure as grace, as infinite as man may undergo, shall in the general censure take corruption from that particular fault. The dram of…”

She stops herself and freezes. In her anger, she forgot who she was in the presence of, and fills with dread.

Romeo realizes this. “Do not stop on my accord. The dram of?”

“...of...evil. The dram of evil doth all the noble substance of a doubt to his own scandal.” She finishes, voice shaking.

“Fear not my acrimony, dear Iphis, for if any Dane were safe to criticize this land in the presence of, this unfaithful countryman, though faithful in all but this affair, should be me. Thou knowest by this time well my delation of the King, should he be called such.”

“Ay, I am familiar,” she turns to look out onto the woods, “and fear to add my suspicion to the boiling pot.”

“Suspicion?” She asks. She knows exactly what she’s talking about, as they both hinted it earlier, but feigns ignorance.

“A word ending in -cide I grow myself by the day more comfortable with.” She admits, and lets this implication hang between them, heavier than the thick fog.

Romeo lets a seed of pride plant itself in her chest; Juliet is the first person to openly criticize the system around her, no layered passive-aggressive comments. She wonders if Juliet hates Claudius more than she does.

She doesn’t have a chance to keep pondering this, to keep searching for answers in that face full of secrets on the tip of her tongue, because Juliet spots a ghostly figure and grabs her shoulder.

“Look, my lord,” she whispers, “it comes.”

With a sharp breath, Romeo steps forward. “Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, be thy intents wicked or charitable, thou com’st in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee. Shall I call thee ‘King,’ ‘Father,’ ‘Royal Dane?’”

Once again, it does not respond. She runs closer, stumbling on her last few steps.

“O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, have burst their cerements; why the sepulcher, wherein we saw thee quietly interred, hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws to cast thee up again! What may this mean that thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel, revisits thus the glimpses of the moon, making night hideous, and we fools of nature so horridly to shake our disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?”

“Say,” She continues, with a strange mixture of anxiety and distraction, “why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?”

Instead of responding, the ghost sets its blank eyes on his daughter, and reaches one arm out, calling for her.

Juliet studies her. “It beckons you to go away with it, as if it some impartment did desire to you alone.”

“Look with what courteous action is waves you to a more removed ground.” Marcellus says. “But do not go with it.”

“What?” Juliet asks.

“It will not speak.” Romeo says. “Then I will follow it.”

“Do not, my lord!” Marcellus argues.

“What, why should be the fear? Hath we not brought him out for this purpose?” Juliet hisses.

The Princess seems to agree, transfixed with the ghost. “I do not, Marcellus, set my life at a pin’s fee. And for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as itself?” It motions, a little more impatiently for her. “It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.”

Marcellus grabs her arm. “What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord?”

Romeo doesn’t look back.

“Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o’er his base into the sea, and there assume some other horrible form which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness? Think of it.”

Juliet saunters closer to Marcellus and eyes him. “Ay, my lord, think of it, think of it deeply. And what if it tempt you toward the truth, my lord? Or to the summit of some towering mountain, where the fog is not so thick and consuming as it lies here, and the great heavens bestow the arcane and tricky knowledge of foul play, to which you only are the one to proper deal with? Should not this purpose spark a childlike wonder and desire in thine bosom? Would not its denial deprive your sovereignty of reason as well, leave you mad either path?”

Marcellus ignores her. “The very place puts toys of desperation, without more motive, into every brain that looks so many fathoms to the sea and hears its roar beneath.”

“And yet the rocking of the waves shall cradle, my lord, as a babe, into the stiller waters where the roaring might just cease.”

Romeo looks back, finally, to look Juliet in the eye, and study the way the moonlight licks her electrified face. “Iphis,” she says, “though man may not my type be, thou art my type of man.”

With that, she breaks herself free of Marcellus’ grip and runs after the apparition, leaving Juliet, smugness waning as the moon, to feel her face heat up. She blames this on the bitter wind.

Marcellus gives her a glare. “Shall we at the least follow him?”

“Oh, of course. Had you thought we were to leave him?”

“With the way you spoke, I suspected.” He takes a deep breath to calm himself. “This fills me with a most unquiet mind. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

She laughs, and grabs his arm to pill him along Romeo’s trail. “Nay, friend, ‘tis as fair a night as ever, and the summer air—” she motions to the freezing fog around them, “—is laced with the blooming of blossoms and young love, with roses and alstroemerias, with dandelions—”

“—with dead leaves.” Marcellus quips.

“Nay, nay!” She objects, and pulls him along, faster, faster. “With daffodils. With daffodils as far as the eye can see!”

\---

The only light guiding Romeo is that of her father’s ghost, and she knows by now she’s deep in the woods, far from being out, with the castle now out of sight. She stops.

“Whither wilt thou lead me?” She asks. “Speak. I’ll go no further.”

The ghost turns and opens its mouth. While it speaks, it’s lips seem to barely move. “Mark me.”

She rolls her eyes. “I will.”

“My hour is almost come when I to sulf’rous and tormenting flames must render up myself. Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.”

Romeo crosses her arms and sits criss-cross applesauce on the frozen ground. “Speak, then. I am bound to hear.”

“So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.”

She furrows her brows. “What?”

“I am thy father’s spirit.”

“Ay, ‘twas clear.”

The ghost hovers over and mimics sitting beside her. “I am doomed for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away.” He pauses. “But that I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison house...I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make they two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres—”

“Carry on and freeze me.” Romeo grows impatient.

“Revenge my foul and most unnatural murder.”

She perks up. “Murder?”

“Murder most foul, as in the best it is, but this most foul, strange and unnatural.”

“Haste me to know ‘t, and pile on the list of troubles that plague your dear child.”

“So plagued are you? So plagued am I? Now, Romeo, hear. ‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark is by a forged process of my death rankly abused. But know, thy noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown.”

Now she’s at full attention, and, to the ghost’s confusion, smiles from ear to ear. “That fool! My uncle!”

“Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, with witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts—O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power so to seduce!—won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen. O Romeo, what a falling off was there! From me, whose love was of that dignity that it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage, and to decline upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor to those of mine. By virtue, as it never will be moved, though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, so, lust, though to a radiant angel linked, will sate itself in a celestial bed and prey on garbage.”

She listens intently. “Such a snake to steal a seat.”

“A seat—yours? O, yes, I should think so. But soft, methinks I scent the morning air. Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon, upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, with juice of cursed hebona in a vial, and in the porches of my ears did pour—”

“Thine ears?”

“My ears! Quiet, child, as the moon sets. In the porches of my ears he poured the leprous distilment, whose effect holds such an enmity with blood of man that swift as quicksilver it courses through the natural gates and alleys of the body, and with a sudden vigor it doth posset and curd, like eager droppings into milk—”

She curls her lips in disgust.

“—the thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine, and a most intent tetter barked about, most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust all my smooth body. Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched, cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin, unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled—”

“Art thou not in a rush? ‘Tis horrible, but rush with it, then.”

The ghost glares at her, fed up with interruptions. “Very well. I shall be brief. Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest. But, howsoever thou pursues this act, taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her.”

“Mine blood curdles not for her. Thou hast an unfaithful queen chosen, and for that a venomous debt you paid. Ere my rightful crown, I shall queue a loving and faithful woman the likes of which my mother failed to be for thee.”

“Wh—” The ghost is put off by this. “My dear son, has my arrow miss’d its mark entirely?”

She shakes her head. Everything is perfectly obvious to her, why can’t he see it? “Right in the heart it stings me. My heart is open, father, and bare, and broken in its vulnerability, soft in its tenderness. The right woman hardens one’s heart and enters, placing a padlock and checking the windows. She is careful. I should hope to have that woman, and to be that woman to another.” She explains. “Though I shall rule, thou has a dear son not, but a daughter, not so dear as you wish.”

The ghost looks at her with pupiless eyes, an unreadable gaze, a potion of puzzlement, fear, and anxiety. She would pity it if she didn’t pity herself too much already.

“Adieu, adieu, poor ghost, adieu,” she says, seeing the sun rise, “Thine agenda is fast mine, rest assured, and rest soon. The glowworm shows the matin to be near and ‘gins to pale his uneffectual fire.”

“Romeo—shall I call you Romeo?”

“You shall.”

“I tire of this world, do not speak thyself from existence, do not grow exhausted as your father. To seek retribution is all I ask.” The form fades. “Fare thee well at once.”

A sunbeam strikes in violent, dappled light. And, with that, the ghost of Romeo’s father disappears in the morning. Romeo watches the sun rise from within the trees.

Juliet and Marcellus catch up, both out of breath (not from running, as they slowed a while ago to take better notice of Romeo’s tracks, but from working themselves up).

“My lord?” Juliet asks, placing a tentative hand on her shoulder.

Romeo breaks from her trance and grabs her hand, swinging her towards her with force. “O, what news! What bloody, lovely news!”

“What news, my lord?” She asks.

“O, wonderful!”

“Good my lord, tell it.”

“No, you will reveal it.” She smiles.

“Not I, my lord, by heaven!”

“Nor I, my lord.” Marcellus says.

“How say you, then? Would heart of man once think it? But you’ll be secret?” Her voice buzzes.

They both confirm with an official “Ay, by heaven, my lord,” and Romeo tilts her head back and laughs.

“There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark, but he’s an arrant knave.”

Juliet tilts her head, remembering their earlier conversation. “There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this.”

“Why, right!” She puts up a finger, and looks to the heavens as if to ask what to say. “You are in the right, and so, without more circumstance at all, I hold it fit that we shake hands and part, you, as your business and desire shall point you, and for my own poor part, I will craft a ring of roses and a crown of monkshood, let them not be mixed!”

“These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.”

She drops her hand. “I am sorry they offend you, heartily. Yes, faith, heartily.”

“There’s no offense, my lord.”

She’s back to herself, jagged and vulnerable. “Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Iphis, and much offense, too. ‘Tis past, ‘tis gone, ‘tis too light to fret about much but the gentle sighs of a tender heart! It is an honest ghost, and by its words I should think you the quickest man alive. Your -cide is an ambition I have been urged to strive for, though, as you are friends, scholars, and soldiers, give me one poor request.”

“What is ‘t, my lord? We will, heartily.”

“Ere the crown crumples, see me wed, or promised to be wed.”

Juliet freezes in her spot; the cold ground seems to spread its way up her spine. Marcellus is oblivious. “Wherefore?”

“Are two heads not better than one? Does the sun act sans a moon to take shift? Two skulls clack together and it ripples, to strike a villain alone is a simple feat, but one of many risks. My sword is sharpened and my heart is not.”

“This is nonsense.” Marcellus says.

“No,” Juliet comments, “I feel in part what he means.”

Romeo smiles. “Iphis, should a woman with the mind like yourself live and breathe I should wed her in a heartbeat, in a beat which she drums to. O, Ophelia! To think I will be wed to such a woman.”

“Ophelia?” Juliet pries.

“The lovely daughter of Polonius, who holds in her hands my bleeding heart.” She sighs. “I shall ask her on the morrow. Though, as it is well past, methinks I intend more today at a reasonable hour, ay?”

Juliet makes no comment. Marcellus yawns.

“Men! No romance in their bones.” She starts in a direction she thinks is towards the castle of Elsinore. “Nay, come, let’s go together.”

“My lord?” Juliet corrects. “The castle lies this way.” She points to the path they came from.

Romeo turns around. “Nay, come, and thou shalt lead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know youre for real losing it when youve set and lit a small candle next to your painting of ophelia in the hopes that she may enlighten you with correct flower meanings and a cure for the chronic pain in your shoulder  
> anyway. _back to the party time._

**Author's Note:**

> The Unsorted Pros and Cons of Following [My Tumblr:](https://lifeisdear.tumblr.com/)  
> > askbox always open  
> > the vaguest of writing vagueposts  
> > waxing poetic about my daily life  
> > repression  
> > my "hamlet is gay and homophobic and misogynistic" essay is absolutely unhinged if you can find it  
> > i did a cool painting of ophelia that one time (on two yards of muslin which is now pinned to the wall by my desk)  
> > interludes of as you like it spirals  
> > one day when i finally snap and kill a man i will use it to liveblog my process of hiding the body and therefore every single follower of mine will be an accomplice  
> > really! send me asks!


End file.
